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THE SIGNIFICANCE 
OF 

ANCIENT RELIGIONS 



THE SIGNIFICANCE 

OF 

ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

In relation to 

HUMAN EVOLUTION AND BRAIN DEVELOPMENT 




BY 


El NOEL. REICHARDT, M.D., Lond. 


NEW YORK: DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & CO., Ltd. 
1912 



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Copyright, 191a 
By E. N. REICHARDT 

All Rights Reserved 



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D. C. Public Library 
JUN 7 1938 


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Diagram I.— The Generic Wave. 


WITHDRAWN 

201 - 


CONTENTS 


Introduction .... . . . . . . . . ... ix 

BOOK I 

THE generic wave 

Chapter page 

I. Racial Movements 3 

II. Physical Basis of Racial Movements 21 

III. The Generic Wave and Its Two Phases 34 

IV. Material Deposit of Generic Wave 66 

V. Physical Basis of Generic Wave 94 

BOOK II 


I. 

II. 


JMJII. 

Sftv. 


^ V * 

^ VL 



X. 




I. 

II. 


THE RISE OF THE WAVE 

Religious Ideas of Savages 115 

Significance of Sex in Evolution 128 

First Stage of Religious Development 144 

Physical Basis of Second Stage 163 

Physical Basis of Third Stage . . . 190 

Relation Between Early Religions and Civilisation . . 212 

Fourth Stage of Religious Development 232 

Fifth Stage “ “ “ 255 

Sixth Stage “ “ “ 276 

Revelation of God in Jehovah 297 

Revelation of God in Christ 331 

BOOK III 

THE PERIOD OF SUBSIDENCE 

The Greek and Roman Racial Movements 353 


The Mohammedan, Mediaeval, and Protestant Racial 
Movements 382 

BOOK IV 

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS 

Problems of Morbid Psychology 
Biological Relations . . . 


411 

428 


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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


Diagram' I. The Generic Wave Facing page xiii 

Diagram II On “ 25 J 

Section through Cerebral Cortex of Man .... “ “ 95 S 

Diagram III. Illustrating Trinity of Determinant Fac- 
tors in Generic Process .... Facing page 100 

“ “ 267 


Diagram IV. . . 

Sections of Brain 
Diagram V. . . 






INTRODUCTION 

The title of this work refers especially to the ancient re- 
ligions of Oriental Paganism. The revelation of God in 
the figure of Jehovah is only dealt with, in the first place, 
to emphasise His complete separateness from the deities 
worshipped in those heathen cults; and in the second place 
to show that the conception of evolution which the study of 
these religions unfolds, leads us to the historic proof of the 
assumptions of Judaism and Christianity. The separate- 
ness of Jehovah is not sufficiently emphasised in current 
works on Comparative Religion ; and if I am to develop my 
theme without prejudice, it is necessary that it should be 
clearly impressed on the reader, and that he should con- 
stantly bear it in mind. 

For what I propose to show in this work is that these 
ancient religions embody within themselves a continuous 
progression of ideas which — studied in the light of all 
our modern knowledge, and with special reference to their 
psychological value — completely reveal to us the evolution- 
ary process responsible for the historical progression of 
humanity. I mean by the historical progression of human- 
ity that perspective of human evolution during the last 
eight thousand years which embraces all the facts estab- 
lished by history, by anthropology, by the study of Com- 
parative Religion, and by archaeology. These religions are 
the expression of the development which has actually taken 
place in humanity during this period. The evolutionary 
process revealed in these religions is that of one continuous 
wave of vital energy acting unceasingly on a pre-existing 
form of life for many thousands of years, and lifting it to 
higher levels of capacity and of intelligence. The process, 

ix 


INTRODUCTION 


indeed, bears a striking likeness to that adumbrated in 
Bergson’s “Creative Evolution” — with certain distinctions 
and differences. And the practical value of the study of 
these ancient religions lies in this, that not only does it 
acquaint us with the forces that have determined human 
history and built up human character; it affords us, more- 
over, the key to all the bewildering problems of modern 
psychology. For these religions tell us exactly what has 
taken place in the human brain during this period of de- 
velopment. 

The evolutionary process — the continuous wave of vital 
energy — has propagated itself through a series of smaller 
wavelets, giving rise to the rhythmic growth and decay of 
great communities, which is the most striking characteristic 
of human history. It has added to the human brain a new 
layer of cells; and it is the progressive development of this 
new layer of cells, carried on through each successive wave- 
let, that has given rise to the astounding phenomena of 
human history. During the first half of the development, 
this new mass of cells was barred from contact with the 
outside world by the pre-existing mind-organ; and only 
gave rise in consciousness to subjective presentations in 
which it revealed itself, its origin, and the necessities of its 
existence. It was these subjective presentations that were 
the basis of the religious ideas of Oriental Paganism. The 
great Brahman of the Upanishads — the culminating expres- 
sion of this development — was the deified Self-conscious- 
ness of the individual. Thus the whole of Oriental Pa- 
ganism is a self-revelation of the cosmic process operating 
on the individual. In the second half of the development, 
the new mass of cells has gradually entered into relation 
with the outside world. The first step of this new phase 
showed itself in the Greeks, and gave to them that brilliant 


INTRODUCTION 


xi 


power of objective ideation which still glorifies them in our 
eyes. It was as if in them humanity had been freshly born 
in a new world which the Oriental nations behind them had 
never seen, and which they gazed at and handled with all 
the rapture that accompanies a new sensation. And finally 
the increasing objective development of the new mass of 
cells has endowed us with that enormous grasp over the 
forces and materials of Nature which we possess at the pres- 
ent day. 

It is especially to be noted that this conception does not 
imply anything with regard to the exact relation between 
mind and brain. The reader may have whatever ideas he 
likes on this subject without prejudice to the postulate 
which I have advanced. It is admitted by all psychologists 
at the present day that the brain is the organ of mind, 
and there is only difference of opinion on the further ques- 
tion as to the exact nature of the relationship. This rela- 
tionship does not come within the purview of this work; 
nor, indeed, is there any reason why the obscurity which 
surrounds it should hinder our efforts to establish a clear 
understanding of human evolution and psychology. We 
are as incapable of stating or of conceiving the ultimate 
relations of force and matter as we are those of mind and 
brain; but this incapacity has not prevented us from so 
dealing with forces and materials as to produce the brilliant 
achievements of mechanical science. And in the same way 
we may leave the ultimate relations of mind and brain on 
one side and pass on to extract, from the sequences of events 
in human life and human consciousness that history pre- 
sents to our view, the knowledge of evolution and of 
psychology that will enable us to deal intelligently with the 
problems that more immediately confront us in our daily 
lives. 


INTRODUCTION 


xii 

But it is also an established fact that mind acts on or in 
us in two ways that are entirely different. It behaves 
objectively or intellectually; and it behaves subjectively, or 
intuitionally. And all that is indicated in my postulate is 
that just as the brain is the organ of mind in its objective 
phase, so it is the organ of mind in its subjective phase. 
This of course implies that in the grey matter of the brain 
two different arrangements of the cells exist corresponding 
to the two different phases of consciousness. Every stu- 
dent of cerebral anatomy is aware of the fact that a differ- 
ence of arrangement and relationship does separate the 
grey matter into two halves. The upper part is very much 
less intimately connected with the white matter — through 
which communications are established with the outside 
world — than the lower; and the cells in the highest layer of 
its substance still have no connection with the white matter 
at all. And I say that this is so because, during the specific 
period of development embraced in the historical perspec- 
tive of human evolution, this upper part of the grey matter 
was added to the anatomy of the brain in such a way that 
its cells were at first completely separate from the lower 
part, and that it is only as the result and in the course of the 
development that has taken place in the intervening ages 
that communications have been established between the 
two. It was this separate condition of the upper part 
which made the subjective or intuitional phase of conscious- 
ness supreme during the Oriental period of human develop- 
ment ; and it is the gradual coming of this upper layer into 
relation with the outside world which has made the ob- 
jective phase of consciousness preponderant during the 
Modern period of human development, and has finally 
given us that increased grasp over the materials and forces 
of Nature which we possess at the present day. And I prove 


INTRODUCTION 


xiii 

this by taking these ancient religions and showing that they 
arose out of a continuous progression of mental states which 
were the necessary results of the development taking place 
in the upper part of the grey matter. Step by step I show 
that the whole historical and religious development of 
humanity during the last ten thousand years has been the 
inevitable consequence of the psycho-physiological condi- 
tions postulated in my theory. 

I will illustrate what I mean by the diagram on the pre- 
ling page. 

In this diagram a large wave propagates itself through a 
succession of smaller wavelets. The smaller wavelets, as 
already said, represent the successive Racial movements 
which have given rise to the growth and decay of great 
communities, and through which the evolutionary move- 
ment has propagated itself in humanity. The large wave 
r’ *s to its full height and then subsides. The develop- 
’ t signalised by the large wave commenced about six 
asand years before Christ, and has operated ever since in 
e great growth of humanity. In its period of growth it 
-cessively affected the early Dynastic Egyptians, the 
. <.bylonians, the Persians, and the Hindoos. This was the 
period during which the new cells produced only a pagan 
religious consciousness, which was so subjective that it led 
to the complete neglect, and finally to the complete suppres- 
si >n, of the material civilisation and culture in the midst of 
which the development started. The period of growth 
culminated in the Jewish Racial movement: and at this 
point the energy of the religious consciousness was so great 
that it reached beyond this particular process that was af- 
fecting humanity, and revealed to the individual the Creator 
of the whole Universe. In its later stages the development 
propagated itself through the Greek, the Roman, the Mo- 


XIV 


INTRODUCTION 


hammedan, and the Mediaeval Catholic Racial movements. 
During this period of subsidence, the new cells have saved 
themselves from atrophy by entering into relation with the 
outside world, the oppressive element of Oriental Paganism 
has gradually decayed, and we now stand at the zenith of a 
later Racial movement wherein the tendency towards the 
reintegration of material civilisation and culture is clearly 
triumphant, and the individual is endowed with a grasp 
over the forces and materials of Nature which is enormously 
greater than that possessed by humanity before the develop- 
ment commenced. 

This, in brief, is the substance of my theory, and if the 
reader will follow me, I will prove it beyond all manner of 
doubt in the following pages. It is a theory which explains 
every fact in human development, and gives us the key 
to every problem in morbid psychology. At the same time, 
it is based on facts and on principles that have been estab- 
lished by biological science, and it adequately recognises the 
operation of Natural Selection in cosmic evolution. It is 
a theory, therefore, which is complementary and not antag- 
onistic to Darwin’s great work. 


BOOK I 


THE GENERIC WAVE. 



CHAPTER I 


RACIAL MOVEMENTS 

With the aid afforded to us by history, archgeology, and 
anthropology, the evolutionary movement should be more 
clearly marked out for us in humanity than in any other 
species or genera of living things. History, in particular, 
ought to make the process evident; for it chronicles the 
condition and the actions of human beings in successive 
periods of time. Yet it is a fact that history, as it has 
hitherto been taught, does not suggest to us the true per- 
spective of the evolutionary movement. And for this 
reason: that the historical unit made use of has, with civ- 
ilised peoples, always been the nation and not the Race. A 
civilisation is always regarded as the product of the nation 
in which it occurs, and not of any specific Race of indi- 
viduals. Its national characteristics are allowed, and even 
made use of, to separate it from any other state of civilisa- 
tion which may be occurring in another nation at the same 
time, and its specific Racial characters, which serve to de- 
note its relationship to such adjacent movements, are 
scarcely pointed out. Even when the historian ceases to 
deal simply with the story of a nation, or with the lives 
of those who are concerned with a particular phase of its 
existence, and takes broader views — of the history of Man- 
kind, or the history of Civilisation, or the history of any 
one particular human development — it still remains the 
fact that the nation is the unit he makes use of. 

Now it is undoubtedly true that this point of view has 
a good deal to recommend it. The civilisation of Great 

3 


4 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


Britain is, to a certain extent, a product of the national ex- 
istence of England; the civilisation of the period of the 
Renaissance in Italy was, to a certain extent, a product of 
the national existence of Italy; the civilisation of the Moors 
in Spain was, to a certain extent, a product of the national 
existence of Spain — in so far as each of these structures are, 
and were, based on and built up with materials accumu- 
lated within the geographical limits of each one of these 
nations. But we notice that when we get to a certain dis- 
tance from these events — and it is only from a distance 
that you see the right perspective of things in Nature — 
the national characters of these structures fade away, and 
other characters become prominent, revealing at last the 
true outlines of these several structures, and their relation 
to the rest of the world. For example, we do not usually 
speak of the Moorish civilisation as a Spanish civilisation, 
although the Moors dwelt in Spain for nearly 800 years; 
we think of it as a Mohammedan civilisation, and through 
this conception bring its real form and character into view, 
and also its relation to the civilisation of other nations that 
existed at the same time all around the Mediterranean and 
elsewhere, and its origin from a great human movement 
that started from a point in Arabia. At the distance from 
which we are able to regard this event it seems quite wrong 
— and justly so — to allow a common nationality pos- 
sessed by this one and the one immediately succeeding it in 
Spain, to obscure the separateness of the two movements, 
and to confound them into one and the same national ex- 
istence. The civilisation in Spain that succeeded that of 
the Moors was a structure quite different in character, nay 
more, it was one so deadly antagonistic to the latter, that 
the Catholic Spaniards never rested till they had bundled 
the Moors neck and crop out of the country they had lived 


RACIAL MOVEMENTS 


5 


in for so long, and raised to such a pinnacle of fame. So, 
again, it is scarcely less clear that if we regard the civilisa- 
tion of the period of the Renaissance in Italy as a product 
merely of the national existence of Italy, we are likely to 
lose sight of the essential features of that civilisation, a 
civilisation which was directed by exactly the same forces, 
and arose from exactly the same origin as the civilisation 
of the same period in other nations, in Austria, Germany, 
Belgium, France, and Spain. In these two instances we see 
at once that it would be wrong to allow the national char- 
acter of a civilisation to obscure other characters that it pos- 
sesses, characters which belong to it as part of a continuous 
progressive movement visible in the history of Mankind. 
That the same thing is not so clear with regard to our own 
civilisation is simply due to the fact that we are in the 
midst of it, and cannot therefore without considerable vio- 
lence to our subjective feelings, look at it from a point of 
view which gives us its real perspective. Yet a moment’s 
reflection cannot fail to bring some idea of the truth, that 
the characters that make the civilised growth of England 
part of the general growth of the Protestant movement are 
far in excess of the characters that make the England of the 
present day and the England of the thirteenth century one 
and the same nation. 

A nation, in fact, is a geographical expression. It is, in 
most instances, an artificial construction, consisting of sev- 
eral ethnological groups, whose union is based on political 
considerations and identified with the possession of a com- 
mon country. Within it occur the Racial movements of its 
different ethnological groups, with their different natures 
and their different ideals; and it is the function of state- 
craft to maintain between these a safe equilibrium, which 
has finally the effect of obscuring their outlines and of con- 


6 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

founding them into one national existence. It is this final 
result of state-craft which renders the histories of nations, 
as such, useless to us from an evolutionary point of view; 
for they offer to our view a general effect, resulting from 
the inter-action of several Racial movements, in which it is 
almost impossible to study effectively that of any one in 
particular. The historian himself becomes of necessity 
blinded to that which we especially want to see. Hence, 
although the point of view which regards nations as the 
units in the movement of mankind is one easy to grasp 
because of its prominent geographical features, it is not one 
from which the evolutionary movement in Humanity can 
be seen in its true perspective. 

Bearing this in mind, let us search for the evolutionary 
movement in humanity. 

If we take a bird’s eye view of the history of Mankind, 
we are struck at once by the limited area which the tendency 
to progress has occupied at any one time. There is no gen- 
eral tendency to progress visible diffused throughout Man- 
kind. Instead, we have appearing here and there in suc- 
cessive periods of time, well-defined expansions of develop- 
mental vigour, that lift particular masses of individuals far 
above the general level of surrounding humanity. These 
expansions appear sometimes to be seated in one nation 
alone; at other times they involve several at one and the 
same time. They are therefore not geographical, but are 
solely dependent on the common action of large masses of 
individuals. The movement generated by these expansions 
radiates into far distant regions, but their centres of origin 
remain easily distinguishable. None of these expansions 
last indefinitely. They have each a definite origin, they 
last a certain length of time, and they finally come to an 
end. They all, indeed, seem to last very much the same 


RACIAL MOVEMENTS 


7 


length of time, so that even at first sight there is observable 
a rhythm about them which cannot fail to attract our atten- 
tion. These expansions culminate in what are called civi- 
lisations; it is by them, and during their continuance, that 
everything that belongs to our state, as civilised human be- 
ings or as the highest class of living creatures, has come into 
existence. These expansions, in short, constitute the units 
of the evolutionary movement in humanity. 

Such, for example, is the character of the movements that 
culminated in the Jewish, the Greek, the Roman, the Mo- 
hammedan, the Mediaeval Catholic, and the Modern Protes- 
tant civilisations. Roughly speaking, they each lasted 
about a thousand years; the Jewish from 1500 B. C. to 500 
B. C. ; the Greek from 1 100 B. C. to 100 B. C.; the Roman 
from 500 B. C. to 500 A. D.; the Mohammedan from the 
sixth to the sixteenth centuries; the Mediaeval Catholic 
from the eleventh century to the present day, when all the 
nations involved in it are sinking rapidly and inevitably in 
its decay; finally, the Modern Protestant movement, which 
commenced at the end of the fifteenth and promises to reach 
its zenith in the twentieth century. 

The remarkable rhythm of their successive occurrences 
and disappearances at once suggests the idea that they were 
determined by causes lying altogether outside the control 
of the individuals concerned. We seem to stand in face of 
a cosmic process, which the accumulated wisdom of succes- 
sive civilisations has not been able to interfere with. We 
know that, as a matter of fact, the efforts of all the indi- 
viduals concerned in each movement were directed towards 
the maintenance in perpetuity of their own particular move- 
ment, and the suppression of all others. Yet each move- 
ment appears to have had its appointed time, no doubt 
affected to a certain degree by the wisdom of those involved 


8 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


in it or the dangers that assailed it, and then to have passed 
away; whilst either in its neighbourhood or in some distant 
region, another movement made its appearance, and fol- 
lowed the same cycle of changes. 

The Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans were progressive 
races of a magnificent stature intellectually and morally. 
Greater than these, as they were in their periods of growth, 
the earth has never yet seen amongst all its living creatures ; 
to them we owe the present setting of Religion, Art, Phi- 
losophy, and Law into the texture of civilisation. Yet 
these Races decayed; nor did the frantic exhortations of 
isolated individuals, or the great memories oft resuscitated 
of past achievements, nor even the threatening roar of the 
enemy at their gates, avail in the least to arrest this decay. 
And if these Races — these great pillars of our civilised state 
— decayed, it is simply absurd for us to shut our eyes to the 
fact that is taught us by a general survey of history, that 
this phenomenon of Racial decay is a rhythmically recur- 
rent one in Nature. In whatever manner formed characters 
of brain or body are transmitted by hereditary processes, 
this much must be certain, that the propagation of those 
qualities by which the life of a Race maintains and expresses 
itself, takes place in a perfectly independent manner, which 
cannot be affected in the slightest degree by education, nor 
by any other process that we can invent. Races decay sim- 
ply because the forces that bind them together and lift them 
up on high during the first portion of their existence, ebb 
away from them at a later period. 

The rhythm of these movements reminds us of that which 
marks the succession of generations of individuals. If each 
of these movements represented the life of a distinct organ- 
ism, the resemblance in rhythm could not be closer. 

But let us examine more closely the life-history of these 


RACIAL MOVEMENTS 


9 


individual movements, and see whether it is really com- 
parable to that of individuals. 

There is at least one Race — that which produced in fairly 
recent times the progressive civilisation of the various Mo- 
hammedan nations of the Dark and Middle Ages — whose 
commencement is well within the limits of our historical 
knowledge; whilst the present condition of all its branches 
forms the richest material that the world offers for the study 
of social disintegration. It, therefore, offers itself to us for 
study. It is also of especial value to us, as no one amongst 
us would put forward, as a reason for the separation of the 
Mohammedan Race from the other people of Arabia, and its 
later triumphs, the possession by the former of any special 
form of divine grace. And its Asiatic characters keep it 
distinct from the European Racial movements that preceded 
and succeeded it; so that even to-day all its features stand 
out very clearly. 

The Mohammedan movement owed its orgin to the con- 
tact of the disintegrating Jewish Race, after the destruction 
of Jerusalem by the Romans, with certain of the tribes of 
the Hedjaz in Arabia. The scattered Hebrews mingled 
freely with many other people, even in Arabia itself, but it 
was only in these particular tribes that the new element ap- 
peared. The coalescence in their case was attended, there- 
fore, by certain special features, to which the birth of the 
new element must have been due. Five hundred years af- 
ter the destruction of Jerusalem, the conditions necessary 
for the appearance of this new element were probably com- 
plete. The Race was fully formed, but was not as yet sep- 
arated from the surroundings and coverings of its embryonic 
existence. That it was fully formed, however, is sufficiently 
proven by the remarkable results that followed immediately 
on the appearance of Mohammed. Through his genius it 


10 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


uttered its first cry of life, and stood forth, suddenly con- 
scious of itself and of its destinies in the objective world. 
Within a few years there sprang into existence out of the 
heterogeneous elements of which the population of the Hed- 
jaz was composed, — elements in which discord, pettiness 
of feeling and the intenses t apathy towards anything that 
went beyond the fulfilment of the immediate necessities of 
an animal life, had for ages reigned supreme — a new Race, 
intensely expansive,, filled with the idea that its mission was 
to teach and to govern the world, and ready to dare and to 
suffer everything for the mere satisfaction of vague long- 
ings that had no body in them, and had never disturbed the 
matter-of-fact lives of their forefathers. To ascribe all this 
to the promises of Mohammed with regard to the pleasures 
of a future life is the essence of folly and the refuge of 
bigotry. It is sufficient to note that neither the peoples of 
Yemen or of Nejd, nor of any of the other divisions of the 
Peninsula, responded in the same way to the call, though 
they were all Arabians, speaking the same language, in- 
fluenced by the same feelings, and leading the same manner 
of life, as those of the Hedjaz in previous times. They 
bowed to the expansive spirit of the new Race, and they 
followed at first in its wake, anxious to profit by the con- 
quering spirit that had so unaccountably manifested itself. 
But they soon dropped behind, and severed all connection 
with the movement when they found that its course was not 
to be attended with the lawlessness, the rapine, and the 
plunder, that they had hoped for; when it became evident 
that its objective was civilisation and not a repetition on a 
larger scale of the life of the desert. 

The history of this Race during the next four hundred 
years of its existence is well known. It spread itself over 
an enormous portion of the surface of the world, ruthlessly 


RACIAL MOVEMENTS 


ii 


destroying by fire and sword all obstacles that stood in its 
way. And it is to be noted that this occurred, not because 
of any pressure from over-population in the Hedjaz, not 
because they were stimulated into united and aggressive ac- 
tivity through the hostility and encroachments of external 
enemies; not, in short, through any condition of the environ- 
ment, not through the pressure of circumstances, not because 
of the struggle for existence; but simply because of an in- 
ternal exuberance of energy which impelled them so to 
act; simply because, as they expressed it, it was the will of 
God that they should do so. The spontaneity and magni- 
tude of the impelling forces of internal growth are, indeed, 
particularly manifested in this period of their history. For 
this Race always remained remarkably small in numbers in 
comparison with the enormous masses of individuals that it 
assimilated and leavened into civilised nations. They were 
all distinct and separate from one another, and often en- 
gaged in mutual hostilities; yet they shared one great tex- 
ture of civilised thought and action, because of 
the similiarity of the forces that propelled them. And it 
was during this early period of youthful vigour, and during 
this period only, that this texture was woven. All the laws 
and customs indigenous to the soil of Islam, which we see 
to-day amongst the various branches of this Race, were 
formed during that period. 

Presently the brutal vigour of this first period softened, 
and during the next few centuries, the several capitals of 
the Mohammedan nations were the centres of a vigorous 
and progressive civilisation, just as London, New York, and 
Berlin are to-day. Commerce flourished exceedingly, and all 
the arts and sciences were diligently advanced. It was es- 
sentially a literary age, when even the meanest individual 
was not altogether incapable of giving to his thought a cul- 


12 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

tured expression. A tolerant and enlightened spirit domi- 
nated philosophy, and manifested itself no less in practice 
towards the conquered followers of alien religions. Justice 
was administered impartially, and charity flowed spontane- 
ously from countless sources. Impending hostilities were 
often averted by the suggestions of reason and moderation; 
in the midst of war, humane and chivalrous ideas restrained 
the powers of destruction. In short, this civilisation was 
as completely organised and as progressive in the direction 
of modern advance as ours is to-day; but it had different 
features, and reached only to an inferior level of advance- 
ment, because of its position in time. There were evils 
rampant in its midst, from which ours is free; but there are, 
on the other hand, evils rampant in ours which were absent 
in that civilisation. The totals respectively of the good 
and evil in each are probably to be expressed in equal 
figures. 

At the end of this period, the forces of disintegration 
manifested themselves all along the line, retarded in one na- 
tion or accelerated in another, but everywhere assuming 
finally the character of an inevitable fate. The dangers 
that assailed them were not greater than those they had en- 
countered before; but now, as the years went by, it was 
only with increasing difficulty and with increasing want of 
success, that the contest was carried on. Their own de- 
velopmental energy was ebbing away, and with it the power 
of combination and the spirit of enterprise. The masses of 
individuals whom they had assimilated into nations, now 
overwhelmed them with their accelerated tendencies to re- 
version in their very midst; whilst the enemy outside, whom 
they had easily vanquished before, whom in at least one 
instance they had foolishly spared in the moment of com- 
plete victory and possible annihilation, now pressed them 


RACIAL MOVEMENTS 13 

hard on ever-shrinking frontiers. Thus the process of dis- 
solution went on. And now that Race is dead. The ele- 
ment to which they owed their civilising, productive, and 
progressive characters is extinct. Masses of individuals re- 
main, stamped with the impress of its productive activity, 
handed down through hereditary processes from generation 
to generation. But they are capable of no further organic 
development; they can now only better themselves by imi- 
tating others, in despite of their feelings and their prejudices. 
Individually, they remain stalwart in form and keen in in- 
tellect; in the aggregate they behave as semi-barbarians, act- 
ing as a confused medley of unproductive and chaotic ele- 
ments, wherever the spirit of the age — represented in the 
vigour of the more modern Races — is not allowed to rein- 
force them in what they are wanting. 

So much for the Mohammedans. The facts are indis- 
putable. It will scarcely be denied that in the varying 
phases of this Race there can be seen with remarkable clear- 
ness the life history of an organism. We have first an act 
of fertilisation, an embryonic period, a birth, a period of 
growth, a period of full maturity and productiveness, and 
then a period of decay ending in extinction. 

The origin of the Greeks and the Romans is too remote 
for us to check them with any degree of accuracy, but their 
further movements tally in every respect with the scheme 
above indicated. Everybody knows of the rise of each out 
of the barbarous world, and of that superabundance of ex- 
pansive and developmental energy which was characteristic 
of each for a long while; causing externally the rapid 
spread of their empires and colonies, and internally the 
creation of a social structure expressing the character of 
each Race, not only in Rome and Athens, but in the furthest 
colony and the most distant outpost. Everybody knows 


14 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

also of the golden periods of the Greek and Roman worlds ; 
finally, everybody knows of their gradual decay and final 
extinction. The complete similarity in rhythm and char- 
acter of these two movements to the Mohammedan is at 
once visible to us because of the distance from which we 
view them, and not a word more need be said to show that 
they are analogous events in history. 

When we come to later European history, however, it is 
not so clear at first that any analogous movements have taken 
place in the production of the civilisations of the Renais- 
sance and of Modern times. As a matter of fact there are 
two distinct movements, strictly analogous to those of the 
Mohammedans, Romans, and Greeks, concerned in the later 
historical development of Europe; but from the point of 
view from which the latter has hitherto been regarded they 
are not sufficiently distinct, and their phenomena lose their 
organic coherence and relationship, and become merely 
phases in separate national existences, without rhythm or 
any other continuous and determined character. 

Rut if we judge the well-known facts of this historical 
development from the point of view afforded us by the 
study of the movements already considered, the outlines of 
the two organic movements become very clear, and supply 
indeed an explanation of the political and social phases of 
this development which no other point of view, whether re- 
ligious, historical, or scientific, hitherto advanced, has given 
us. The early ages of this history are usually divided into 
two periods, having well-defined and different characters. 
These two periods are ( l ) the Dark Ages, dating from the 
extinction of the Roman Empire in the Sixth to the early 
part of the Eleventh Centuries; and (2) the Middle Ages, 
dating from the latter period to that of the Early Renais- 
sance in the Fifteenth Century. Everybody is agreed as 


RACIAL MOVEMENTS 


15 


to the character of the Dark Ages ; they are called the Dark 
Ages, for never in this history of Christendom has there 
been a period of such complete intellectual stagnation. 
But during these five hundred years something was taking 
place, something far more important to the world than the 
petty squabbles of Church and faction, or the sanguinary 
combats of savage tribes, of which history tells us. This 
important thing that was taking place was the coalescence 
in various parts of Europe of the disintegrating Roman Race 
with the various Gothic tribes. This coalescence took place 
in Italy, Roman Germany, Spain, Southern France, Switzer- 
land, and Belgium. And the beginning of the Eleventh 
Century brings us face to face with the commencement of 
a new Racial movement in all these regions, marked by ex- 
actly the same features as in the case of the Mohammedans. 
We know that at this time a great religious effervescence 
made its appearance spontaneously over the area indicated, 
purging the Church of its rotting foundations, raising it 
afresh on new and elaborate bases to a point of power that 
it had never reached before, and creating what was practi- 
cally a new religion, giving rise to the deep and permanent 
schism between the Greek and the Roman Churches. It 
was the change wrought by the sudden appearance of this 
new element that inaugurated the Middle Ages; the Middle 
Ages are but one long unfolding of the ideas of universal 
monarchy and of indivisible Christendom incorporated in 
the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Church, in which 
this element, in its earliest stage, expressed the sentiment of 
its Racial unity. And in the gradual formation of a new 
character in this Race binding together several separate na- 
tions in the bonds of a common civilisation; in the rapid 
commercial and imperial expansions of the Italian, the Aus- 
tro-German, the Spanish, and the Portuguese States ; in the 


16 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

intolerant ruthless energy which propelled vast masses of 
Crusaders to the East, and expelled the highly civilised 
Moors from the land which they had made the gem of the 
civilised world — so intolerant and ruthless that even the 
beautiful marble baths of Cordova were razed to the 
ground, and bathing in general forbidden; because of the 
association of cleanliness with Islam — in all these features 
we see distinctly represented the characters of the first or 
growing period of a Race. Then out of this rugged period 
of brutal and intolerant vigour, we presently see unfold the 
beautiful flower of the Renaissance, beginning in Italy in 
the Fourteenth, and attaining its height in Central Europe 
towards the end of the Fifteenth Century. But beautiful 
as it was, and full of intellectual and artistic productive- 
ness, it was not more beautiful or more remarkable in any 
way than the corresponding periods in the movements of 
the Mohammedans, the Greeks, and the Romans. 

This Early Renaissance, or the period of full maturity 
of the Mediseval Catholic Movement, was at an end by 
the middle of the Sixteenth Century. Ever since that date, 
the nations of Central and Southern Europe, those that were 
made great by the progressive vigour of this Race, have sunk 
into an ever-increasing state of decay, and to-day we are the 
witnesses of the gradual extinction of its last energies. In 
Italy, where its growth was earliest, it is already dead; the 
political and social structures of Mediaeval times have van- 
ished, and a new and intensely modern creation has arisen 
instead — artificial, however, and not organic, devoid of all 
original productive capacity, and depending for its existence 
on the imitation of others, and not on its own innate vigour 
of growth. In Spain the Race still grasps solidly the na- 
tion which it formerly energised, and has dragged it down 
in its own decay to a level scarcely realised by people in 


RACIAL MOVEMENTS 


i7 


general before the late war. In Austria we see, in the in- 
ternal struggles that are distracting that country, the dying 
Race loosening its hold over the various ethnological groups 
which it had previously welded together into one solid na- 
tion, and which now threaten to break up the empire into 
several very distinct and antagonistic parts. Even if the 
geographical necessities of this Empire force it to remain co- 
herent, it is certain that the near future will see a complete 
re-creation of its social and political structure, and a com- 
plete extinction of the predominance of that element that 
keeps it still bound up in the woof of the Middle Ages. 

The history of the Mediaeval Catholic Movement is there- 
fore analogous in all its phases to that of the Moham- 
medans, the Greeks, and the Romans. 

Finally, in the Reformation, we have the birth-cry of a 
new Race, to the development of which our civilisation is 
due. Wherever this Race was cradled in the bosom of the 
old Saxon people, wherever, in fact, the latter had settled 
in bygone times, there we see at the same moment the same 
spontaneous upheaval directed by a single and common 
conscience, and a single and common will; followed by 
the same form of growth that we have noted as occurring 
at the commencement of the Roman Catholic and of the 
Mohammedan movements. Wherever it took root, we soon 
see signs of a new element appearing — a rugged, brutal, in- 
tolerant, and uncultured element, which gradually fash- 
ioned for itself a new mode of life, and tended to expand 
in all directions. The Reformation has, it is true, usually 
been represented as a movement towards greater freedom of 
thought. But it was more than that, or rather, at its in- 
ception, it was not that at all. For when it burst forth, 
namely, at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century, the Early 
Renaissance had done its work in Southern Europe, and 


18 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


had swept away the intolerant spirit of the Middle Ages. 
There was, therefore, no raison d'etre in its occurrence sim- 
ply as a movement towards such an objective. Nay, on the 
contrary, at its inception its objective lay in exactly the op- 
posite direction; for, as everyone will agree, the early Re- 
formers were all and each of them most narrow-minded and 
intolerant men, to whom the very idea of intellectual cul- 
ture, as opposed to religious domination, was obnoxious. 
They went about teaching that in the Bible lay all that was 
worth knowing in the world, and declaring that all who 
were not of their mind were outcasts on this earth, and fore- 
doomed to eternal damnation in the life to come. Their 
mood, indeed, and that of all the great masses of indi- 
viduals whom they represented — the Puritans, the Luth- 
erans, the Calvinists, and others — was just that of the early 
Mohammedans and the early Roman Catholics. And for 
several centuries they showed clearly the same brutality 
and the same arrogant intolerance that distinguished the 
growing periods of the Roman Catholic and the Moham- 
medan movements. It is true that early in the history of 
the movement there occurred in all the countries where 
Protestantism had appeared, the period of intellectual and 
artistic productiveness that is called the Later Renaissance. 
But this Later Renaissance was just the Early Renaissance 
reinvigorated by the energy of the new Race where the two 
came together, and was not a development of the Protestant 
movement at all. The Later Renaissance was a civilisa- 
tion of the aristocracy; it was appreciated by only the gov- 
erning classes who were wholly Mediaeval in form and feel- 
ing. It was not democratic, it did not permeate the whole 
people as did the civilisation of the Early Renaissance, and 
that of the Moors, and as ours is just beginning to do at the 
present day. It disappeared with the decay of Mediaeval- 


RACIAL MOVEMENTS 


19 


ism, and its disappearance was followed by a period devoid 
of any great intellectual or artistic productiveness; which 
would certainly not have been the case if the Later Renais- 
sance had really been an expression of the Protestant move- 
ment, for the latter lost none of its vigour, but actually in- 
creased in volume and momentum. During this very 
period of stagnation, indeed, the history of the nations 
which the Protestant movement involved is strongly 
coloured by the increasing aggressiveness of a new and vig- 
orously progressive element — but an element that was 
rugged and uncultured — unceasingly struggling with in- 
creasing success against a more highly cultured but effete 
aristocracy, until it finally swept the latter aside, and estab- 
lished its own ideals as the dominant factors in the world’s 
government, preparatory to entering upon the era of ma- 
ture productiveness in every branch of human endeavour 
which commenced in the Nineteenth Century. 

Circumstances allowed this Race to expand most freely 
and to attain its completest development in England, so 
that England stands to-day at the head and front of civ- 
ilisation. In Germany a great portion of its energies were 
wasted in the great religious wars through which it had to 
secure its emancipation, so that until very recently its 
growth was slow and painful. In Holland its growth was 
rapid and brilliant. In Belgium it has furnished the power 
that has kept this little nation in the front rank of pro- 
gressive civilisation, whilst its contemporaries of the Mid- 
dle Ages have utterly decayed. In France, overwhelmed 
and distorted out of all natural shape by the pressure of 
hostile circumstances, it yet managed in the Revolution to 
give a terrible and revengeful coup-de-grace to the powers 
that had crushed and disfigured it, and to bring France into 
line with the advancing movement. In America it has 


20 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


brought vast regions within a short space of time into as 
highly civilised and well-furnished a condition as the oldest 
progressive nations. Both England and America have 
profited enormously by all the vicissitudes to which this 
Race has been subjected in other regions. For every 
Huguenot, every Lutheran, and every Netherlander who 
has fled from his country to find a more congenial home 
where his Race was dominant, has been not only a good and 
industrious worker, charged with all the knowledge and 
craftsmanship accumulated during the Middle Ages, but, 
moreover, the generator of a line of progressive individuals. 

Many chapters might be devoted to the consideration of 
these matters, but this work is not designed, when com- 
pleted, to occupy a yard or more of book-shelf space. 
Enough has been said to show that the point of view above 
indicated does bring into focus a very solid and extensive 
array of historical facts. From that point of view, the evo- 
lutionary movement in humanity is seen to be a succession 
of rhythmical Racial movements. In each movement a 
single wave of vital energy operates simultaneously on 
large numbers of human beings throughout a long series of 
generations, and endows the whole mass with the specific 
unity of a Race. The vital impetus rises to a certain point 
of intensity, and then ebbs away and becomes extinct; as 
if it were itself the expression of the life of a living organ- 
ism. That is the appearance ; the question is, can we satis- 
factorily account for the appearance in biological terms'? 


CHAPTER II 


PHYSICAL BASIS OF RACIAL MOVEMENTS 

As a matter of fact, there is no difficulty at the present 
day in accounting in a natural way for the universal agent 
postulated in the last chapter, if we look for it in the Germ- 
plasm from which all human beings have their origin. Of 
late years, a number of workers in Embryology, amongst 
whose names that of Weismann stands pre-eminent, have 
made us familiar with the idea of the continuity of the 
Germ-plasm. The conclusion to which these observers 
have arrived is that in the reproduction of the individual, 
a part of the original mass of germinal matter behaves 
differently from that which develops ultimately into the 
individual. This particular part soon becomes quiescent, 
undergoes no further development, and in this state forms 
the reproductive tissue of the new individual. This tissue 
is little, if at all, affected by the experiences of, or the 
changes in, the individual that carries it; and when repro- 
duction takes place again, it is from this tissue that comes 
the germinal mass which develops into the offspring. In 
other words, both the offspring and the parent originate 
from identically the same stock of Germ-plasm, which in- 
creases in bulk but is not changed in nature by the indi- 
viduals that carry it along through the succeeding genera- 
tions. All these succeeding generations spring from the 
same stock of Germ-plasm. 

Now this idea is by no means simply an imaginary one. 
The early division of the Germ-plasm has been actually 
demonstrated by Weismann in certain species. In view of 
the fundamental importance of the phenomenon in the 

21 


22 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

economy of reproduction, if it happens at all, it is most 
probably universal; and it is scarcely to be doubted that 
these observations furnish us with a glimpse of what is 
constantly happening in the universal process of reproduc- 
tion, though it cannot always be made manifest by the 
means that we possess. Weismann’s elaborate proof of the 
real continuity of the Germ-plasm from generation to gen- 
eration throughout the whole world of living species, based 
as it is on observation of real facts, or of processes in actual 
being, certainly ranks among the most luminous and fertile 
contributions of the Nineteenth Century to biological 
thought. 

If the Germ-plasm possesses a continuous independent 
existence throughout a series of generations, then it is easily 
conceivable that a stimulus might be applied to this current 
of living material that would make its effects felt through- 
out a series of generations. This conception offers to us at 
once some idea of the process which underlies the unity of 
a Racial movement; and it is not difficult to define it still 
further. If in each creation of a new individual, a part 
of the Germ-plasm passes on unchanged by the develop- 
ment of the individual, then it is easily conceivable that 
in the Germ-plasm as it exists to-day we have a portion of 
germinal substance which is the direct unmodified descend- 
ant of the germinal matter of the original protozoon. It is 
certain that throughout the earlier stages of the evolu- 
tionary process, some of the germinal matter must have 
been carried on in its virginal state. And since there is no 
reason to suppose that this virginal matter ever lost its 
power of reproducing itself under an appropriate stimulus, 
it is clearly beyond question that it would thus continue to 
reproduce itself, provided such reproduction subserved a 
useful function in the economy of evolution. And that 


BASIS OF RACIAL MOVEMENTS 


23 


this reproduction of itself in its original state does subserve 
a most important function in the economy of evolution is, 
in fact, the basis of the theory of causation arrived at in 
this work. The central idea of this theory of causation is 
nothing less than that every evolutionary movement is 
the direct result of a specific fertilisation of the virginal 
plasma, and its consequent development in the form of a 
definite organism, within the eternal current of the Germ- 
plasm. 

We assume, therefore, that in the Germ-plasm there are 
two different kinds of elements. From the fertilisation of 
one kind springs the individual, from the fertilisation of 
the other comes the development that gives to a Racial 
movement its form and character. Certain of the plasma- 
elements have had impressed on them, in the past ages of 
evolutionary activity, tendencies to reproduce a definite 
bodily structure. When they are stimulated into growth, 
these modified or structural plasma-elements at once set 
about to reproduce this inherited anatomy, and they have 
no power to do anything beyond effecting this reproduction. 
This capacity they have necessarily acquired at the expense 
of some of the energy which they originally possessed as 
virginal plasma. They have therefore come to differ rad- 
ically in some of their properties from virginal plasma; 
there would be a difference of constitution, a difference in 
developmental energy, and as a further necessary resultant 3 
a difference in susceptibility to stimulation or fertilisation. 
The same act of fertilisation does not, therefore, necessarily 
affect both. Each kind requires a stimulus peculiar to 
itself, although both forms of stimulus might be applied 
by the same act of fertilisation. In the act of fertilisation 
that results in the ontogenetic development of the indi- 
vidual and nothing more, it is the structural or modified 


24 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

plasma alone which is quickened into developmental ac- 
tivity; the virginal elements present remain inert, and are 
simply stored up unchanged with those parts of the struc- 
tural plasma that go to form the generative tissues of the 
new individual. 

But the case is very different when the virginal plasma- 
element receives an independent and specific stimulation 
sufficient to quicken it into developmental activity. Then, 
as in the former case, a growth takes place determined and 
limited throughout by the initial developmental energy set 
free by the act of fertilisation, and the energy of this 
growth rises to a certain point of maximum intensity and 
then wanes away and finally becomes extinct. It is a 
growth of living material, and behaves like any other living 
organism. But it is a growth contained within the eternal 
current of the Germ-plasm; it is therefore not continuous 
like that of the individual, but undergoes periods of sus- 
pended activity like the rest of the Germ-plasm which is 
carried on by individuals, from generation to generation. 
It is quickened into momentary activity at each new birth 
of an individual, and then becomes quiescent with the other 
elements that go to form his generative tissues. Conse- 
quently, a long series of generations spring from the Germ- 
plasm before the specific energy of the Racial organism be- 
comes extinct. This long series of generations forms a 
particular Race of individuals, with special characters and 
a distinctive unity stamped on them, in consequence of the 
condition of the Germ-plasm at the time of their origin. 

For so long as the developmental energy of the Racial 
organism continues in being, its substance is no longer inert, 
but developmentally active in the highest degree. It has, 
of course, no capacity to form itself into large organs, like 
the structural plasma; but it is ready to undergo the very 


BASIS OF RACIAL MOVEMENTS 


25 


first stage of anatomical development. In other words, it 
can undergo division into an infinite number of virgin cells, 
capable of exercising a most powerful physiological influ- 
ence on the organs to which they happen to be attached, 
either in the way of modifying their functions, or still 
further increasing their efficiency. In this condition part 
of the virginal plasma is drawn, by the somatic portion of 
the structural plasma, into the development of the indi- 
vidual ; thus every individual enters the world governed to 
a considerable extent by a form of energy which springs 
solely from the Racial organism, and differs in many ways 
from that which belongs to his inherited physical organisa- 
tion. 

The formative material of these virginal elements en- 
ables the individual to develop new characters, and their 
energy enables him to maintain them in spite of an hostile 
environment. 

The following diagram will help to make clear my 
meaning : 



Diagram II. — Representing a Racial Movement. Wave is Virginal Germ- 
plasm; perpendicular lines are Individuals. 

I have said enough to show that is is not difficult to 
imagine a natural process capable of accounting for the 
agent that determines the unity of a Racial movement, and 
I have defined the agent in the light of a purely biological 
conception which has nothing mystical or metaphysical 
about it. 


26 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

Each Racial movement, therefore, is generated by the 
vitality of a definite organism which has its existence in the 
eternal life of the Germ-plasm. This organism so operates 
in the ordinary process of reproduction that in its growth 
and development it gives rise to a particular Race of human 
beings, distinguished from all others by its sentiments on 
things in general, by a common consciousness of the higher 
aspects of human life, by a common energy of Racial exist- 
ence, and finally by a particular texture of social customs. 
This organism grows, reaches maturity, decays, and dies 
like any other living organism; and the individuals which 
it affects in these varying phases of its existence, reveal in 
their characters the corresponding degrees of Racial energy. 
The Race grows, expands, fights for its ideals, establishes 
its own modes of behaviour, effects a further advance in 
mental evolution which enables it to originate new ideas 
or create new situations in the outside world — all under the 
overwhelming influence of innate growth. Then, as the 
Racial energy wanes, the masses of individuals which it 
has welded into homogeneous nations gradually lose the 
cohesive, expansive, and productive energies which have 
raised them to the hegemony of the civilised world, whilst 
retaining the formed characters of mind and body, and the 
institutions of corporate existence, with which the Racial 
growth has endowed them; and as the forces of innate 
growth ebb away, so do they come more and more under 
the influence of external circumstances. When the organ- 
ism has completely lost its vitality, then the tribes of in- 
dividuals left behind go on reproducing themselves, and 
perpetuate in their habits, manners, customs, and social 
institutions, the indelible impression which has been 
stamped on their stock during the period of active Racial 
growth. If left alone, they simply lapse into one monot- 


BASIS OF RACIAL MOVEMENTS 


27 


onous form of existence, which they continue unchanged 
from generation to generation. There are peoples who 
have in this way suffered no change for several thousands 
of years. If, however, their surroundings alter, if they 
are encroached upon by other Races, especially if these 
latter are more powerful or more definitely formed than 
themselves, then an endless number of changes of a more or 
less superficial type may occur. These changes are gov- 
erned by the law of Natural Selection. The characters 
which are useful to the individual in his struggle for exist- 
ence against his new surroundings will perpetuate them- 
selves, those that are actively noxious to him will 
disappear, whilst those that are neutral will probably sur- 
vive in diminished form. Thus the original type of the 
species may become finally extinct, and represented merely 
by a number of varieties which differ widely from each 
other and from their common parent, and only retain as 
their common heritage from the creative and organic ele- 
ment of the past a more or less pronounced similarity of 
internal character. Variations in the original character of 
the species may, indeed, be consolidated by the Racial or- 
ganism itself, during its period of growth, when it operates 
in separate masses of individuals which already differ from 
each other nationally or ethnologically. 

To sum up: Evolution in humanity is a collective 
process. The form of the process suggests that it is de- 
termined in each step by the operation of a universal agent, 
which takes part in the creation of great masses of human 
beings, and endows them throughout a series of generations 
with the specific unity of a race. Moreover, the evidence 
strongly suggests that each universal agent is a living or- 
ganism, which lives and dies like any other organism, and 
by its growth and decay produces in the masses of indi- 


28 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

viduals that it affects the specific characters of a Racial 
movement. This is the Law of Racial Movements. 

There is nothing improbable in the general principle of 
the conception of evolution indicated. The central idea 
of the conception is that every evolutionary movement 
originates in a process of exactly the same character as that 
which determines the ontogenetic development of the in- 
dividual. Now ontogeny, or the growth and development 
in all its phases of the individual, is one of the commonest 
facts of observation. Nay, of all the possible forms of the 
evolutionary process, it is the one which is the most vividly 
concrete to our consciousness. In insisting on the onto- 
genetic character of Racial development, therefore, I am 
not trying to palm off, in the name of Science, a meta- 
physical or mystical conception. There is nothing more 
certain about Nature than the uniformity and eternity of 
her laws. There is nothing more probable than that all 
evolutionary processes should be of the same type as that 
which she is every day presenting to our view in the de- 
velopment of the individual. 

The Law of Racial Movements constitutes a factor in 
the philosophy of history which has never yet entered into 
the calculations of any scientific philosopher. It will 
presently be seen that it affords us the key to the whole 
problem of human evolution. In this chapter it will suf- 
fice to point out that it effectually dispels the mystery that 
has hitherto surrounded the origin of civilisation. For it 
follows from the Law of Racial Movements that in any 
developing mass of human beings there is present a force 
capable of over-riding the ingrained egotism of every unit 
for a considerable period, extending far beyond the life of 
the individual into the quasi-eternity of five centuries, and 


BASIS OF RACIAL MOVEMENTS 


29 


rendering imperative the collective form of existence. 
This force is necessarily altruistic, and makes for civilisa- 
tion. Nor is there any difficulty in understanding the 
altruism which reveals itself in so many of the phenomena 
of human existence, when it is thus presented to our view. 
The instinct of self-preservation breeds egotism pure and 
simple: there is no difficulty in grasping this fundamental 
axiom. It is also quite clear that it cannot spontaneously 
breed that which is the negation of egotism, viz., altruism. 
The motive power of every living organism, therefore, is 
a pure egotism which makes ruthlessly for the satisfaction 
of all its cravings. But the Law of Racial Movements 
shows us that, besides the egotism of the individual or- 
ganism, there may be operative in the human being the 
egotism of another and more powerful organism, which, 
by modifying or suppressing the egotism of the individual, 
and by inducing modes of behaviour necessary for the ex- 
istence of the Racial Organism, invests his character with 
those tendencies which must spring from the presence in 
it of an altruistic determinant. 

In considering the inter-action of these two determinants 
of conduct, and the consequent effects on the current of 
human existence, it is well to remember that the primary 
egotism of the individual is solely inspired by the instinct 
of self-preservation, and must therefore be constantly 
limited by a due regard for his own comfort and safety. 
Whilst it impels the individual to satisfy his every craving, 
the intensity of the impulse can only be strictly propor- 
tionate to the resistance likely to be encountered. If this 
resistance promises to endanger his life, or cause him bodily 
harm, or even a considerable amount of discomfort, then 
the impulse naturally evaporates in proportion as the pros- 
pect is threatening or disagreeable. Pure animal selfish- 


3 o THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

ness, born of the instinct of self-preservation, drives the 
individual along the path of least resistance and makes him 
highly accommodative to circumstances; but it gives him 
no energy or determination. From it no persistent or 
vehement action can ensue, for the simple reason that, 
wherever the resistance is such as to render such action 
necessary, the instinct of self-preservation makes him a 
coward and causes the impulse to evaporate. Only the 
great organic cravings, the satisfaction of which are indis- 
pensable for the maintenance of life are, in these circum- 
stances, likely to provoke strenuous action; but even these 
will not stand against the prospect of serious bodily danger. 
Pure animal selfishness, in short, may act as a drag on the 
tendency to effort aroused in the individual by the Racial 
Organism; but it has nothing in common with that turbu- 
lent form of egotism, which, because it is capable of endur- 
ing many things and risking everything in the pursuit of an 
object, may convert the cravings of the individual into 
ambitions and passions strong enough to throw out of gear 
the unity of the collective form of existence induced by the 
Racial Organism. 

Now the supreme necessity for the fulfilment of the 
existence of the Racial Organism is the maintenance and 
perpetuation of the Race. First, therefore, in the scale of 
obligations which it imposes on individuals come the pro- 
visions for producing and protecting new generations, and 
for binding together, both for the purpose of internal har- 
mony and for that of external defence, the community in the 
midst of which this machinery for procreation is embedded. 
It endows each individual with a growth of virginal cells, 
which are identical with its own substance, and which con- 
tinue to act as its representative throughout the whole of 
the existence of the individual ; so that during the whole of 


BASIS OF RACIAL MOVEMENTS 


3 


this existence, and throughout the existence of a long series 
of generations affected, there is at work a formative process, 
which ends by stamping on the individual organism ideas 
and functions which have as their sole object the mainte- 
nance of the Race. This result is assured in consequence 
of the manner in which it acts. Not only does it act for 
a short while on the individual, but continuously through- 
out a long series of generations, and with increasing and 
cumulative force as its developmental energies unfold in 
the Germ-plasm from which these generations spring. 
Every effect produced in one generation is transmitted to 
the next and then further added to; whilst the resistance of 
the already constituted organisation of the individual be- 
comes proportionately weaker in each successive generation. 
Finally it acts in such a way — by operating equally and at 
the same time in large masses of individuals — as to bring 
the force of public opinion to bear on the attitude of any 
single person. Whilst the individual thus becomes en- 
dowed with higher energies and capacities for action than 
those which spring from his instinct of self-preservation, 
this endowment converts him into a social creature, and 
makes him an instrument in the consolidation of the Racial 
existence. 

But the easiest way in which the Racial Organism can 
effect its purpose is obviously by striking a balance with 
the tendencies of the ingrained egotism of the individual. 
This balance is most easily secured by ministering to the 
material interests of the individual, wherever they do not 
clash with the conditions necessary for the maintenance of 
the Race. It is clear that in the creation of a co-operative 
system which promises to lighten the burden of his own 
struggle for existence, the instinct of self-preservation itself 
will help to bend the individual to the shape required for 


32 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

the due fulfilment of the Racial existence. Hence it be- 
comes part of the object of the Racial Organism to estab- 
lish such a system: a system which, whilst it assures on the 
one hand the permanence and security of the Race, on the 
other hand properly equilibriates the warring egotisms of 
the masses, secures justice and equality for the individual, 
and efficiently ministers to his material interests. 

Every Racial Movement, therefore, makes for the crea- 
tion of a cohesive and defensive organization of individuals 
equal in privilege and in obligation, which is framed with 
the sole view of meeting the needs and idiosyncracies of 
the individual, and of advancing his material interests; of 
which the centre is the institution of marriage, with its 
provisions for the production and protection of new genera- 
tions. In one word, it makes for civilisation. And if we 
bear in mind the fact that such an organization, once estab- 
lished, would not tend to disappear with the energy of the 
Racial Organism, but would perpetuate itself, even after 
this becomes extinct, through the character acquired by 
the individual in these long years of development and 
through the stability of those habits, customs, laws, cere- 
monies, and institutions which are the concrete expression of 
the Racial instinct, and which constantly revive in the in- 
dividual the impulses and feelings which spring from it; if 
we bear this in mind, then it is clear that, provided there is 
nothing further in the evolutionary process, provided there 
is nothing in the character of this process capable of over- 
whelming the civilising influence of the Racial movement, 
then the forces of development themselves must tend to 
render civilisation permanent and universal. 

If this is so, then it is clear enough that the Racial process 
is not the sole determinant of human evolution; for, as a 
matter of fact, civilisation is not permanent and universal, 


BASIS OF RACIAL MOVEMENTS 33 

and the Modern movement itself started from conditions 
that violated in every particular the requirements of the 
modern ideal of civilisation. 

In the next chapter we shall proceed to investigate the 
course of human evolution in ancient times, so as to find out 
what it was that paralysed the civilising influence of the 
Racial movement, and produced the unmitigated barbarism 
which was characteristic of the Oriental nations when the 
Modern movement began. 


CHAPTER III 


THE GENERIC WAVE AND ITS TWO PHASES 

Fifty years ago the historical perspective of human evolu- 
tion was practically limited to the period of three thousand 
years referred to in the first chapter; but at the present 
day, thanks to the great achievements of a devoted band 
of archaeologists, this perspective stretches back to four 
thousand years before Christ. During the last half cen- 
tury, the cuneiform and hieroglyphic texts have been de- 
ciphered, the palaces and temples of Babylonia have been 
excavated, and the tombs of Egypt have given forth the 
message with which they have been silently eloquent for 
so many thousands of years. So large a number of his- 
torical facts, sequences of events, and pictures of human 
existence have been unearthed and verified that the pre- 
Hellenic or Archaic phase of the world-drama of human 
evolution is no longer the “terra incognita” which it was 
only a short while ago. Although our knowledge is still 
too hazy on many points, especially in matters of chro- 
nology, to enable us to follow in detail the rhythm of each 
Racial movement, it is sufficient to give us a very clear 
idea of the general outline of the evolutionary movement 
in humanity during the last six thousand years. 

The rhythmic pulse of the Racial process is, however, 
clearly apparent in the alternation throughout this Archaic 
age of periods of great power and constructive energy with 
periods of weakness and decay. The history of ancient 
Egypt alone affords us two periods of intense constructive 
energy, one culminating in the Fourth, and the other in 

34 


THE GENERIC WAVE 


35 


the Twelfth Dynasty, that we can follow in sufficient de- 
tail to make it evident that they are analogous in all re- 
spects to the corresponding movements in European history 
which we have noted in the first chapter. The mode of 
propagation of the evolutionary movement during the 
Archaic period, therefore, has been the same as during the 
Modern. But the result on humanity of the evolutionary 
movement during each of these periods appears, on the 
other hand, to have been exactly opposite. It is to this 
remarkable fact that I wish to draw the reader’s attention 
in the present chapter. 

Everyone is agreed that from the time of the Greeks 
onwards, humanity has moved continuously, though at first 
with many lapses and pauses, in the direction of material 
civilisation and culture, and away from the barbarism, the 
savagery, the superstition, and the ignorance of the physi- 
cal world which were characteristic of the Oriental nations 
when that movement began. And to-day we stand at a 
point when the progress in the direction indicated has been 
so marked that, although we are by no means yet perfectly 
civilised, there is no doubt nor even a difference of opinion 
in the minds of men as to the ideal for which humanity is 
striving. We may differ radically as to how this ideal is 
to be attained; but it is the same ideal which is clearly re- 
vealing itself to every human being, and to every progres- 
sive nation in the civilised world, as the ultimate goal of the 
Modern phase of human development. 

The modern ideal of civilisation is one that is designed 
to secure, simply and solely, the material happiness and wel- 
fare of the great mass of human beings concerned. On the 
one side it embraces the advancement of every form of ma- 
terial knowledge that can enhance the pleasures or limit the 
hardships of human existence; on the other, the building 


36 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

up of a social organisation which is capable of assuring to 
every individual the same legal status, and of protecting 
the harmony of social existence from the destructive play 
of the great passions. The modern sociologist no longer 
measures civilisation by the heroism, the refinements and 
graces, the material and artistic splendours, which have 
rendered occasional phases of human history brilliant in 
literature. He estimates the degree of civilisation in any 
society by the perfection of the means adopted to secure 
peace, justice, and morality. For in a perfectly civilised 
society, the necessary social relations should be carried on 
with the least possible degree of friction; and it should not 
be possible for whatever friction is unavoidably generated 
to develop to such an extent as to cause explosions of 
violence. The more the social relations are such as to 
render such explosions frequent and unavoidable, the more 
does the social state approximate to what we call savagery. 
And peace, justice, and morality are so essential to the 
harmonious living together of a great mass of individuals 
that they are fundamental requirements of the modern 
ideal of civilisation. 

Now in each one of the creative periods in European 
history the trend of the evolutionary movement has un- 
doubtedly been to raise humanity towards this modern ideal 
of civilisation. In some Racial movements the results 
achieved have been greater than in others, for in the be- 
ginning the difficulties encountered were tremendous, and 
as it has become freer the movement has gathered mo- 
mentum; but in each creative period the direction of the 
movement has been the same. As a result there has taken 
place during the last three thousand years an enormous 
advance in material knowledge, as well as a remarkable 
attenuation of all those elements which are hostile to the 


THE GENERIC WAVE 


37 


true spirit of civilisation both in the organisation of society 
and in the character of the individual. The ancient strati- 
fication of society into separate categories of power and 
privileges, that flagrantly violated the principle of justice, 
has disappeared to such an extent that the legal status of 
all individuals in every progressive modern state is equal. 
If modern democracy still fails to produce absolute equality 
in the privileges and obligations of social existence, it is 
not because it is hindered to any appreciable extent by what 
remains of these ancient categories, but simply because the 
innate moral capacity of individuals is not yet equal to the 
requirements of such an ideal state of existence. But 
though the innate moral capacity of the individual is still 
far from that degree of perfection, yet it is so advanced 
that we at the present day find it very difficult to realise 
the play of that turbulent egotism, and the grip of those 
great passions, that in ancient times produced such havoc 
in the relations of humanity. The improvement in all 
these things, indeed, has been so marked that every modern 
philosopher has assumed that this kind of progression is 
the permanent and essential feature of human evolution. 
In every current theory of development it is assumed that 
the history of humanity represents a continuous progres- 
sion from the brute condition of the uttermost social, moral, 
and mental incompetence to the material civilisation and 
culture of the present day. 

We have seen that there is inherent in every Racial 
process an overwhelming influence which makes for civilisa- 
tion in the modern sociological meaning of the term, so that 
if the Racial process were the sole determinant of human ev- 
olution, this type of civilisation would necessarily be perma- 
nent and universal. But as a matter of fact, civilisation is 
not permanent and universal, and the Modern movement 


38 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

itself started from conditions that violated in every par- 
ticular the requirements of the modern ideal of civilisation. 
These conditions could only have come into existence 
through the operation of another cosmic process of evolu- 
tion, operating in ancient times with sufficient power to 
paralyse the civilising influence of the Racial movements 
during the Archaic period. We shall presently enquire 
into the nature of this larger cosmic process. For the mo- 
ment what I want the reader to understand is that the serial 
succession of Racial movements in European history was 
in itself capable of going a long way towards raising hu- 
manity towards the modern ideal of civilisation. And if 
we remember that the civilising influence of each Racial 
movement had to fight for its ideal against conditions 
already established in human society and human nature by 
the cosmic process which had produced the intense bar- 
barism of the Oriental world, we shall understand that the 
effect of the serial succession of Racial movements in Euro- 
pean history on humanity would necessarily be a progres- 
sive one, increasing and becoming more manifest in propor- 
tion as the power of the obstructive conditions waned. 
What we must conclude, therefore, is that in European 
history the obstructive and oppressive element inherited 
from ancient times has been in a state of decay; and that in 
proportion as this element has decayed, the Racial move- 
ments have succeeded in rendering civilisation more per- 
fect. 

But besides the civilising influence of each Racial move- 
ment, there has also been in operation throughout the later 
stages of the Modern period of development the influence 
of a religion which has endowed the trend in human nature 
towards peace, justice, and morality with all the force of 
a divine inspiration. Christianity was not produced by 


THE GENERIC WAVE 


39 


any of the Racial movements in European history; it was 
therefore not the result of any feeling produced by the 
racial movement itself, and its effects in history must be 
carefully distinguished from those produced by the civilis- 
ing influence of the Racial movements themselves. It was 
initially revealed in the figure of Jehovah to the Hebrews 
when they were still in the grip of that element which had 
produced the barbarism of the Archaic world. The original 
idea of Jehovah was that of a God whose sole object in 
creating men was that they should enjoy, in a civilised 
manner, the material world which He had brought into 
existence. Swamped by the earlier paganism of the He- 
brews, this original idea lost its essential significance; and 
in the later Judaism Jehovah became a deity who treated 
humanity as oppressively as any of the pagan gods. It was 
not until the original idea of Jehovah was made manifest 
once more in Christ that it regained its original significance, 
and awoke in humanity a religious influence that made for 
the modern ideal of civilisation. But its effect in deter- 
mining the progression towards this ideal must not be ex- 
aggerated. The progression towards this ideal had already 
made great strides throughout the thousand years which 
include the Hellenic and Roman Racial movements, long 
before Christ had so embodied in Himself the original idea 
of Jehovah as to bring it into relation with the new move- 
ment; and no sooner had Christianity got some hold over 
the Roman world than its essential significance was lost in 
mystical interpretations of pagan origin which so com- 
pletely swamped it that it became merely a confused med- 
ley of all the ancient superstitions which had lived within 
the vast expanse of the Roman Empire. By purifying 
these ancient superstitions it enormously increased the au- 
thority of religion over the individual, but it was a re- 


4 o THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

ligion so imbued with the oppressive element that was a 
distinguishing feature of Oriental Paganism that it no 
longer was capable of generating any considerable im- 
pulse towards the modern ideal of civilisation. In the 
Roman Catholicism of the Mediseval racial movement, this 
oppressive element assumed monstrous proportions, and 
Christianity in this guise became more effectively antago- 
nistic to the true spirit of civilisation than the decaying pa- 
ganism of the Greeks and Romans has ever been. It is 
only as our own Racial movement has approached its zenith 
that a dawning intuition of the essential significance of 
Christianity has shown it to be a religion in complete sym- 
pathy with the modern ideal of civilisation. This dawning 
intuition will doubtless completely alter the character of 
Christianity, and we shall then have a religion which will 
not only reinforce all the effects produced in human char- 
acter by the civilising influence of the Racial movement, 
but also capable of predisposing human nature towards 
civilisation in directions, as I shall show later on, where the 
Racial influence itself can have no effect. But for the first 
2,500 years of the Modern period, it was the civilising in- 
fluence of the Racial movements alone that fought against 
the obstructive and oppressive element of ancient times, 
and secured the gradual progression of humanity towards 
the modern ideal of civilisation. So far as we have got, 
therefore, the determining factors of the progression towards 
civilisation of humanity during the Modern period have 
been the decay of the obstructive and oppressive element 
inherited from the past, and the consequent progressive 
liberation and increase of the civilising influence of the suc- 
cessive Racial movements. 

Now in the Archaic phase of human history, the aston- 
ishing thing is that there occurred no progression whatever 


THE GENERIC WAVE 


4i 


towards the modern ideal of civilisation. On the contrary, 
it is abundantly clear from the evidence we possess that 
there occurred during these three thousand years a distinct 
retrogression in everything that relates to material civilisa- 
tion and culture. This retrogression was determined by 
the growth of a religious consciousness which gripped the 
individual with a force that we at the present day can 
scarcely realise, and was throughout its whole course hostile 
to civilisation, hostile to social morality, and hostile to 
natural knowledge. It imposed on him an iron rule that 
made for the neglect and the suppression of all those fine 
and equitable adjustments that maintain the principles of 
justice and good fellowship in social relations. It sub- 
stituted for these adjustments other arrangements and 
modes of behaviour which sprang from the religious feel- 
ings, and which were necessary for the worship of the gods, 
but which at the same time completely set at naught the 
right of human beings to be treated on a basis of equality 
in the social organisation. It engendered in the individual 
a passion for the shedding of blood and for promiscuous 
sexual intercourse which were equally obligatory in the wor- 
ship of the gods; and this passion which obsessed him with 
all the force of a divine impulsion, soon put an end to peace 
and morality in the civilised world. Finally it induced in 
him a mental attitude that so blinded him to the realities 
of the external world that in the first place it made him 
incapable of acquiring material knowledge; and in the 
second place it rendered him utterly callous to the suffer- 
ings of his fellow creatures. 

When I say that there occurred during these three thou- 
sand years a distinct retrogression in everything that relates 
to material civilisation and culture, I am implying that the 
state of things at the commencement of this period was one 


42 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

much more akin to the modern ideal of civilisation than 
that with which this period concludes; I am implying that 
the civilisation of the earliest historical peoples was one 
more peaceful, more just, and more moral than that of the 
later Oriental nations. That this is so must be evident to 
anybody who takes a bird’s-eye view of the progression of 
humanity during the whole of this period. The fact is not 
so clearly made out in works on Archgeology, simply because 
the archaeologist has so far worked in the light of a theory 
which postulates a continuous progression from lower to 
higher states of civilisation, and is too much immersed in 
the details of his splendid achievements to note accurately 
their bearing on the general philosophy of history. The 
form in which these achievements are presented to us, 
therefore, necessarily is one that tends to diminish the value 
of every indication that points to any other kind of progres- 
sion. But if we take a bird’s-eye view of the whole period 
of three thousand years, and compare the condition of the 
earliest civilisations in all matters that relate to peace, jus- 
tice, and morality, with that of the later empires, the evi- 
dence is so abundantly clear that the reader will at once 
see that the Archaic phase of progression has been one away 
from, and not towards, the modern ideal of civilisation. 
Furthermore, the amount of retrogression during the Archaic 
period of three thousand years is exactly equal and com- 
parable to the advance during the Modern period of three 
thousand years. 

Let us first take the principle of justice. In the earliest 
Sumerian civilisation, the inhabitants of every city were 
mainly agriculturists and traders, and no special indignity 
attached to the idea of manual labour. There were men 
who were richer than others; there were masters who em- 
ployed others to work for them ; there were priests and there 


THE GENERIC WAVE 


43 


were warriors; but these higher classes of the community 
were not banded together into separate castes possessing 
any different legal status from that of the agriculturists. 
Every service rendered by one individual to another, what- 
ever their relative positions might be, was conditioned by 
a mutual consent, and arrangement, which was embodied 
in the form of a written contract duly attested before a 
magistrate, setting out all the particulars of the service, 
and the payment that was to be made for it; and this con- 
tract was equally binding on both parties concerned. There 
was nothing to prevent any one of the lowest class from 
becoming wealthy and even from becoming ruler of the 
state if his natural capacity was equal to raising him to 
such a level ; and no bar existed to the marriage of persons 
belonging to different levels of society. The same condi- 
tions are still more clearly apparent in the early Dynastic 
period of Egyptian history. In this period, it is true, the 
deification of the prince raised him far above his subjects; 
and the tendency of the religious consciousness to make 
the upper classes arrogant and the lower classes humble had 
already begun to give to their relations a feudal complexion. 
But, nevertheless, there was not in the civilisation of the 
period which centres round the Fourth Dynasty any trace 
of the caste system. Men frequently bred up their sons 
to their own trade or profession as they do in all countries, 
but they were not obliged to do so — there was absolutely 
no compulsion in the matter. The public schools of Egypt 
were open to all comers, and the son of the artisan sat on 
the same bench with the son of the noble, enjoyed the same 
education, and had an equal opportunity of distinguishing 
himself. If he showed sufficient promise, he was recom- 
mended to adopt the literary life, and the literary life was 
a sure passport to state employment ; state employment once 


44 THE significance of ancient religions 

entered upon merited secure advancement, and thus there 
was, in fact, no obstacle to prevent the son of a labouring 
man rising to the very highest position in the state and in 
the empire.* Successful ministers were usually rewarded 
by large grants of land from the royal domain, and it fol- 
lows that a clever youth of the labouring class might, by 
good conduct and ability, make his way into the ranks of 
the landed aristocracy; and even the highest in the land, 
the deified king, might, it appears, wed with a woman of 
the lower classes, and she was then treated with all the 
dignity and consideration that was accorded to every wife 
in this period of Egyptian history. 

The sculptures of that period fail to afford us any evi- 
dence that the lower classes were subject to that extreme 
and cruel oppression which we know became their lot in 
later ages. We do not see the stick at work upon the backs 
of the labourers in these sculptures; they seem to accom- 
plish their various tasks with alacrity and gaiety of heart. 
They plough and hoe and reap; drive cattle or asses; win- 
now and store corn; gather grapes and tread them, singing 
in chorus as they tread; cluster round the wine press, or 
the threshing floor on which the animals tramp out the 
grain; gather lotuses; save cattle from the inundation; 
engage in fowling or fishing; and do all with an apparent 
readiness and cheerfulness which seem indicative of real 
content, f Kings of a morose and cruel temper were cer- 
tainly the exception rather than the rule at this time, and 
the moral code which required kindness to be shown to de- 
pendents seems, at this period at any rate, to have had 
a hold upon the consciences and to have influenced the con- 
duct of the mass of the people. Certainly, the remains of 

* Rawlinson, Ancient Egypt; cp. story of Antem in Maspero’s Dawn of 
Civilisation. 

t Rawlinson, Ancient Egypt. 


THE GENERIC WAVE 


45 


the period give a cheerful representation of the condition 
of all classes. It is not until we get to the monuments of 
the Twelfth Dynasty that we begin to see figured, in the 
representations of contemporary life that adorn the tombs, 
any sign of the cruel treatment of the lower classes, the use 
of the stick in driving the labourers to their work, and the 
use of the bastinado in the collection of the taxes. 

In short, the justice of social relations was, in this early 
civilisation, exactly similar to that which obtains in ours at 
the present day. The difference is that their social rela- 
tions were just beginning to suffer from an increasingly 
oppressive element in their religious ideas, whilst ours are 
just escaping from it; they were drifting into a state of 
feudalism, whilst we are just emerging from it; with them 
the masses were beginning to surrender their rights to equal 
treatment in the social organisation, whilst with us the 
masses are just beginning to claim them. The idea of jus- 
tice with them was a diminishing, with us it is an increas- 
ing quantity; but the actual relations established in the 
social organisation of both civilisations stand, in this re- 
spect, on the same level. As with us at the present day, 
the different classes enjoyed very different degrees of ma- 
terial privilege and well-being; and the destitution of the 
lowest class was sometimes very severe. But, as with us 
at the present day, the legal status of every individual was 
equal, there was no caste system, and there was liberty and 
opportunity amply afforded to every individual to rise in 
the social scale, and even to attain to the highest and proud- 
est position in the empire. 

The labour involved in the building of the Pyramids 
was undoubtedly enormous, and must have imposed on the 
population some long periods of universal service which 
may, or may not, have been compulsory. But the writers 


46 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

who have argued from this that the lower classes were, dur- 
ing this period, subjected to a state of cruel oppression 
seem to have entirely forgotten that because of their re- 
ligious ideas the building of these Pyramids was actually 
a national necessity, and not merely the result of the over- 
whelming arrogance of the king. For the king at this time 
was one of the great gods, only more intimately connected 
and more responsive to human beings than the other gods 
by reason of his human nature; and the dominant idea 
amongst these early Egyptians was that of the future life. 
In the upper classes, who were mostly worshippers of gods 
typified by Rah, this idea of a future life expressed itself 
in a complete assurance of immortality; in the lower classes, 
however, who mostly worshipped gods typified by Osiris, 
there was only a longing for immortality, and a belief that 
it might be achieved, but there was no assurance about the 
matter. The individual had not sufficient confidence in 
himself, and only felt in his humility that he might secure 
it through the protection of some being or some god more 
powerful than himself. And just as in secular matters the 
workmen looked to their master for protection and 
help, and the master to the official, and the official to 
the governor, and the governor to the local prince, and the 
local prince to the king; so in the supreme matter of a 
future life, the lower classes generally looked to the king 
for help and protection, as the king was one of the gods. 
But in order that the king might help them in this matter, 
it was necessary that his own immortality should first be 
assured, and assured in such a way that no hazards of time 
could imperil it. And as the Egyptian conception of im- 
mortality made the enjoyment of the future life conditional 
on the preservation of the corpse, therefore in the building 
of these great Pyramids which assured the immortality of 


THE GENERIC WAVE 


47 

their kinds, every Egyptian, and especially every low-class 
Egyptian, had an overwhelming interest. The moment 
the reader realises this fact, he will see at once that the 
tax thus imposed on the Egyptian people did not differ 
in any degree from that which is imposed in our civilisation 
on every able-bodied citizen by the universal military serv- 
ice which is compulsory in most of the great states at the 
present day. Nor is there any indication, as I have already 
said, in the sculptures of the period, that this universal 
service was exacted from the Egyptians in any more cruel 
or oppressive manner than that which secures for the state 
at the present day a system of national defence. 

In this connection we must not forget the so-called 
“Negative Confession” which every man, whether rich or 
poor, had to be able to make and to sustain at the judgment 
seat of Osiris when he died, before his soul could enter 
into paradise. This “Negative Confession” is of very 
great antiquity,* and undoubtedly shows us how the Egyp- 
tians of the Early Dynastic period thought they ought to 
behave to their fellow creatures. The deceased, brought to 
the foot of the throne of Osiris, had to plead his cause be- 
fore forty-two jurors* who were the spirits of men who had 
known him during his lifetime. He had to declare and 
to prove amongst other things that he had not committed 
any iniquity against men; that he had not oppressed the 
poor; that he had not laid labour upon any free man be- 
yond what the latter had engaged himself for; that he 
had not caused any slave to be ill-treated; that he had 
not starved any man; that he had not made any to weep; 
that he had not assassinated or dealt treacherously with any 
man; that he had never pulled down the scale or falsified 

* Maspero tells us that it is found on monuments of the earliest dynas- 
ties; and that it was even then regarded as very ancient. 


48 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

the beam of the balance; that he had not taken the milk 
from the mouths of sucklings; that he had spread joy on all 
sides around him; that he had given bread to the hungry, 
water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked; and in general 
that he had succoured those in distress. His statements 
had to be verified by the forty-two jurors, and the attendant 
gods who weighed the actions of his life in the mystical 
balance of Truth had to give a favourable report before he 
was allowed to pass on to take his place in the regions of 
the blessed. Here we have a code of human obligations, 
enforced by the severest penalty — for the future life was 
a reality ever present in the thought of the Early Egyptian 
— which did not differ in the slightest degree from that of 
our modern ideal of civilisation. The accepted basis of 
social relations revealed in it is that of good fellowship, 
equality, and fraternity. The very terms in which it is 
expressed make it obvious that it applies especially to the 
behaviour of the upper classes of society. It compels them 
to treat even those born in the lowest class with justice, 
love, and consideration; and does not graduate the obliga- 
tions thus imposed according to the social position of those 
affected. The recognised basis of social relations is there- 
fore one that differs root and branch from that which was 
established by the caste system, and enforced by the wor- 
ship of the highest gods, in later times. 

It is quite true that other parts of the “Negative Con- 
fession” show that acts relating to the worship of the gods 
are treated on the same footing, and might be awarded 
the same, or perhaps even a higher degree of merit than 
those which relate to the justice and humanity of social 
relations. Thus in the weighing of actions in the mystical 
balance of Truth, it might often happen that a generous 
attitude towards the gods and their priests, or a scrupulous 


THE GENERIC WAVE 


49 


attention to the ritual of divine worship, might condone 
very serious infractions of the moral law. But after all, 
that is exactly our own case. Not only throughout the 
whole history of Christendom has it been so, but even with 
us at the present day, though doubtless in a minor degree, 
generosity and assiduity in everything that relates to the 
ritual observance of religion too often completely satisfies 
the conscience of the individual. I am not concerned to 
prove that the civilisation of the early Dynastic period was 
a perfect one. The “Negative Confession” itself suggests 
that the abuses of power, and the indifference to human 
suffering, which it stigmatises as sins, were already becom- 
ing unduly prevalent at that time. But on the other hand, 
no one will deny that such abuses of power and such in- 
difference to human suffering are still very widely preva- 
lent in our own civilisation. What I am concerned to 
show, and what — considering the necessary limits to which 
the subject must be confined in this work — I have said 
enough to prove is that the justice and humanity of social 
relations in that ancient civilisation and in our own at the 
present day are exactly similar and comparable. About 
this there can be no manner of doubt. 

Now in the later ages of the Archaic period the growing 
feudalism, which already reveals itself in the old Egyptian 
kingdom, lost all the redeeming points which it possessed 
at this early time; and social relations gradually drifted 
into a state which is the very antithesis of that postulated 
in our modern ideal of civilisation. The caste system still 
prevalent amongst the Hindoos perpetuates in a very modi- 
fied degree the specific features of this type of civilisation, 
which became established about 2,000 years before Christ 
in all Oriental nations, and especially in those most power- 
fully affected by the later stages of the religious develop- 


50 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

ment. What this caste system originally implied is more 
fully revealed in the sacred books of the Brahmins, which 
have all been translated during the last fifty years by the 
group of workers headed by Max Muller, and in particular 
rendered accessible to the general student by the Index 
recently brought out by Professor Winternitz. The struc- 
ture of society in those days had become altogether feudal 
in character; but the relations of the classes in each feudal 
section were quite different to those which had existed in 
the early dynastic period of Egyptian history. The feu- 
dalism was far more intense, because of the increased mili- 
tarism of the age, and the increased necessity for protection 
from violence and outrage. But it was not this more in- 
tense feudalism that wrought the catastrophic change in 
social relations. The principal of feudalism is not neces- 
sarily antagonistic to the true spirit of civilisation. It is 
merely the rendering of services in return for services con- 
ferred, and the hereditary consolidation of the relations 
thus established. So long as these relations are based on 
a loyal recognition of the principle of reciprocity, there may 
be nothing in them that is not just and equitable, or incom- 
patible with the material happiness and welfare of each 
unit of the community. Indeed, in circumstances such as 
those of the later ages of the Archaic period, when the 
whole atmosphere of human existence was one of passion, 
strife, and anarchy, and the different classes of each com- 
munity had different aptitudes for the resistance of aggres- 
sion — it might be the only form of social existence that 
could assure to the great mass of each community that se- 
curity and protection from external enemies which is essen- 
tial to the enjoyment of the blessings of civilisation. It is 
not because the structure of society became more and more 
feudal that civilisation suffered. It would be more correct 


THE GENERIC WAVE 


5i 


to describe feudalism as the means by which the civilising 
influence of each Racial movement sought to preserve for 
each small community some measure of civilisation, amidst 
the growing militarism and anarchy of the times. It was 
the growth of the principle of caste that destroyed the 
equity of social relation; and caste is altogether a different 
thing from feudalism. For whilst feudalism is initially a 
reciprocal arrangement between different classes possessing 
different aptitudes whereby the material interests and 
welfare of the whole community may be best provided for, 
caste is nothing more nor less than the complete denial 
and obliteration of the principal of reciprocity. It was 
caste alone that banished all justice and humanity from 
social relations in the later ages of the Archaic period, and 
converted the feudal system into a huge engine of oppres- 
sion. It not only deified the upper classes, and reduced the 
great majority of human beings to a lower level than that 
of the brutes; but it actually made it a crime for the upper 
classes to treat the lower with justice and humanity. And 
caste was not at all the result of any material necessity of 
the times ; it was not in any sense a reasonable arrangement 
contrived to serve some useful purpose in the interests of 
civilisation. It was simply the result of the development 
of the pagan religious consciousness. For Brahminism, as 
a religion, is simply and solely the deification of the Self 
in human nature; and the principle of caste expresses this 
deification of the Self in the classes most capable of the 
process of self-exaltation. 

At the head of Hindoo society stood the three favoured 
castes. Their primary duty and the object of their exist- 
ence was the exaltation of their self-consciousness. They 
might minister to this duty either by the study of the Vedas, 
as in the case of the Brahmins; or by being terrible and 


52 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

merciless in all forms of strife, as in the case of the Kshatri- 
yas; or by the acquisition of wealth, as in the case of the 
Vaisyas. The great mass of the labouring population in 
each feudal community formed the fourth or lowest caste — 
the Sudras. Their sole business was to serve the higher 
castes and to minister in every possible way to their self- 
exaltation. In addition, there were a number of pariah 
castes, whose condition was even more debased than that 
of the Sudras. 

The caste of each individual was determined by his 
birth; and he could not, during his lifetime, by any means 
whatever rise into one higher than the one into which he 
was born. For a Sudra to represent himself as of a higher 
caste was a mortal sin, meriting capital punishment. The 
legal status of each caste was absolutely different in every 
circumstance of life. The laws were indeed mainly framed 
for the protection of the three upper castes. The fourth 
caste and the out-castes appear to be considered only in so 
far as they contribute to the advantage of the superior 
castes; and the gulf which divided the legal status of the 
Brahmin from that of the Sudra was prodigious and 
monstrous. 

The life, person, property, and women of the Brahmin 
were protected by the severest laws in this world, and the 
most tremendous denunciations for the next. He was 
exempt from corporal or capital punishment, even for the 
most enormous crimes. Indeed, if a Brahmin fulfilled his 
proper functions and was learned in the Veda, or assiduous 
in muttering to himself those sacred syllables whose mysti- 
cal value equalled that of the whole of the Veda, he might 
commit any crime, even murder, with complete impunity. 
He was exempt from all taxation, and it was incumbent 
on all classes to maintain and enrich him, by large and 


THE GENERIC WAVE 


53 


liberal gifts on those ceremonial and sacrificial occasions 
which were of daily occurrence. 

The Sudra, on the other hand, was completely at the 
mercy of the higher castes. A mere shadow of legal pro- 
tection, it is true, was afforded him so long as he remained 
virtuous; but as he lost every claim to virtue the moment 
that anything in or about him excited the anger, greed, or 
lust of a Brahmin, the protection was very ephemeral. He 
could amass no wealth, even if he had the power, lest he 
should become proud and give pain to Brahmins; and 
whatever he had could be taken from him by fraud or 
force on certain occasions. He was compelled to serve the 
upper castes without payment or reward. If he even so 
much as spoke to one of a superior caste disrespectfully, 
his tongue was slit; and if he presumed to sit on the same 
seat as a Brahmin, a knife was used to gash the part offend- 
ing. His life was forfeit on the slightest provocation; but 
even if he were killed without giving offence, a slight fine, 
or a penance similar to that for killing a frog, a dog, or a 
lizard, was sufficient to atone for the crime. For a Brah- 
min to marry a Sudra woman was to disgrace himself irre- 
trievably; but he could freely use Sudra women as concu- 
bines. But if a Sudra man attempted to mate with a 
Brahmin woman, even though she were a consenting party, 
he was liable to be bound up in dried grass and burnt to 
death. 

But this prodigious inequality in the legal status of the 
castes was not all. I have said that a Brahmin might 
commit any crime against humanity, in his relations with 
Sudras, with impunity. But there were certain things he 
could not do to them without being very severely punished. 
He could not treat a Sudra as his equal; he could not do 
him any kindness or service — this is repeated and empha- 


54 the significance of ancient religions 

sized in several passages in the sacred books — even though 
the service were not menial in character; he could not tend 
or succor him if he were lying by the wayside sick or 
wounded unto death; he could not in any way interfere 
with the operation of caste law, and mitigate the evil 
which it might inflict on him; he could not sacrifice for 
him, or initiate him in the way of expiating offences, or 
teach him the sacred Vedas which absolved other men from 
their sins, and assured them happiness in the next world. 
All these acts of common humanity were the greatest crimes 
that the Brahmin could commit; and the punishment they 
entailed was the greatest that could be inflicted on him. If 
he behaved to a Sudra in this humane manner, or made 
him some return for his services by performing on his 
behalf those offices which were his own peculiar function 
in the economy of Hindoo society, he lost his caste in the 
present life, and was sent to hell in the next. 

The accepted basis of social relations revealed in the 
sacred books of Brahminism, with its monstrous self- 
exaltation on the one side and its monstrous self-abasement 
on the other, was not peculiar to the Hindoos. It became 
established in all the great Oriental nations that come 
within the historical perspective of human evolution; and 
its remains can be easily recognised throughout the greater 
part of European history. What makes the evidence af- 
forded by the social institutions and the sacred books of 
the Hindoos so valuable is that they so clearly and unblush- 
ingly reveal its true origin as well as the full extent of its 
inhuman significance. The position of the Brahmin in 
Hindoo society, as well as the Vedic laws themselves, prove 
categorically that the influence which so completely ban- 
ished justice and humanity from social relations in the later 
ages of the Archaic period was that of religion. 


THE GENERIC WAVE 


55 


I must deal more shortly with the principles of peace and 
morality. In the early Sumerian civilisation, a quarrelsome 
spirit was already manifest, and the rivalry between differ- 
ent cities, and disputes concerning their commerce, their 
boundaries, and other matters led frequently to a petty 
kind of warfare. But in the earliest times of which we 
have knowledge, at any rate, it is clear there were no large 
wars of conquest. The people were mainly peaceful traders 
and agriculturists. There was no professional warrior 
class, and the rulers of the different cities did not strive to 
distinguish themselves as great conquerors. The peaceful 
atmosphere of the early Dynastic period of Egyptian his- 
tory is a matter of common knowledge. Egypt was not at 
this time a military empire; it had no permanent military 
organisation, and waged no wars of conquest. The few 
expeditions that are recorded against neighbouring nations 
were of a petty character and undertaken for the attain- 
ment of some definite, limited, and useful object, and came 
to an end as soon as the object was attained. But more re- 
markable still is the peace that appears to have reigned for 
so many hundreds of years internally in Egypt, despite the 
military weakness of the supreme government. • For Egypt 
at that time was divided into many small feudal states or 
nomes , as they were called, each with its own prince or 
governor, who had complete control over the local militia, 
which was recruited at need from the whole mass of the 
population. The king had no standing army nor any mil- 
itary force at his command that he could control directly. 
Yet in spite of this weakness in military matters of the 
king, the internal atmosphere of Egypt appears to have 
been one of constant peace, undisturbed by any turbulence 
on the part of the feudal princes for many hundreds of 
years. It is, therefore, clear that the spirit of militarism 


56 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

and the love of warfare for its own sake, and the turbulent 
egotism that leads to war, were very slightly developed in 
these sections of humanity at the commencement of the 
Archaic period. But in the later ages of the Archaic 
period, the whole complexion of things in this respect was 
changed. Instead of the peaceful current of life which ob- 
tained in the earliest times, the fair fabric of social exist- 
ence was constantly shaken to its very foundations by vol- 
canic passions and ambitions. Every state had become a 
prey to the lust of war, and had moulded itself into a 
massive engine of aggression which was constantly in oper- 
ation. The riot and glory of conquest had become the very 
salt of life, and the erstwhile peaceful peoples had become 
converted into hordes of frenzied warriors who were utterly 
callous and indifferent to the sobs and shrieks of a tortured 
humanity. The kings and feudal princes vied with each 
other in the glory of strife; not only were the great empires 
always at war with each other, but the small feudal states 
of which each empire was composed were just as prone to 
fight amongst themselves. The spirit of aggression and 
militarism became everywhere predominant and a state of 
warfare became the accepted normal condition of human 
existence. 

Now in this later period the deities worshipped by the 
Babylonians, the Assyrians, and the Phoenicians were vio- 
lent and warlike gods who thirsted for the blood of human 
beings. The same character belonged to the later gods of 
the Egyptians typified by Amon-Ra, and those gods of the 
Hindoos who were typified by Siva. Greater crimes 
against humanity were daily and hourly committed in the 
worship of these gods than are perpetrated in the rites of 
the most savage of the so-called savage races of the present 
day. Human blood flowed constantly on their altars, and 


THE GENERIC WAVE 


57 

the atmosphere that pervaded these cults was one that 
inevitably engendered a spirit of brutality and violence, 
and drove the individual with all the force of a divine im- 
pulsion to satisfy these cravings in strife and bloodshed. 
If, therefore, we ask how it was that humanity, which had 
in earlier times shown itself so averse to war, should become 
in later times so inflamed by this great passion, the answer 
is quite clear. It was the necessary result of the develop- 
ment of the pagan religious consciousness which made these 
warlike and blood-thirsty gods in these later times the ob- 
jects of divine worship. 

With regard to morality, the evidence is just as clear and 
conclusive. In the early Dynastic period of Egyptian his- 
tory, marriage was rigidly monogamous. It was an exclu- 
sive and strictly conditioned relationship, the terms of 
which were equally binding on both parties; and the wife 
possessed a legal status which was not merely equal, but in 
some respects superior, to that of the husband. There ex- 
isted besides, no doubt, a considerable amount of irregular 
sexual intercourse; and the kings and nobles, in particular, 
already kept concubines in their harems. But this irregu- 
lar sexual intercourse was kept in the background and con- 
sidered wrong. The high position in the family enjoyed 
by the wife, and the steps she undoubtedly could take to 
maintain that position, sufficiently assured this. In the 
writings of that early time, young men are frequently ex- 
horted to marry and to be faithful to their wives, and to 
beware of the guile and lure of strange women.* In the 
Confession of Osiris the deceased has to maintain that he 
has not committed fornication; and separately and spe- 
cifically that he has not committed the act within the pre- 
cincts of a temple. Taken at its very worst, therefore, the 
* Brasted, History of Egypt. 


58 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

state of morality prevalent in the Old Egyptian King- 
dom was similar in all respects to our own at the present 
day. 

But what a change took place in this respect in later 
times as the pagan religious consciousness underwent de- 
velopment throughout the Archaic period! The change is 
so monstrous that it is almost inconceivable and incredible ; 
and to ascribe it to the religious development seems to 
affront our own religious consciousness, even though we 
fully realise, as all students of comparative religion do not 
appear to realise, that Christianity is the complete antithesis 
of Oriental Paganism. The sexual immorality which be- 
came prevalent and universal does not bear description. 
Polygamy and unlimited concubinage were not merely sanc- 
tioned within the family, but actually made obligatory for 
men who could afford the expenditure of a large house- 
hold. Women had fallen from the high estate they once 
occupied into the lowest depths of degradation, and had be- 
come things to be bought and sold, for the gratification of 
sexual lust. And that the general erotic obsession which 
possessed humanity at this stage of its development sprang 
directly from the obligations imposed on the individual by 
the religious consciousness is proved by the fact that the 
most universal and promiscuous form of sexual immorality 
was an integral part of the worship of the higher gods. 
Many of the temples in which these gods were worshipped 
were sanctified brothels. Troops of women — and these not 
the scum of their sex, but the best, the highest born and 
the wealthiest — enrolled themselves in the service of the 
temples as priestesses of orgiastic mysteries which had be- 
come for these peoples one of the principal avenues to the 
highest possible religious ecstasy. These sacred courtesans 
were always held in high esteem; and often from amongst 


THE GENERIC WAVE 59 

them the best and noblest in the land chose the wives that 
were to bear them the heirs to their dignities and positions. 
Far from their being tainted with the slightest shade of 
dishonour by their vocation, these mothers, conceiving in 
all the tremors of a divine ecstasy which, in its highest de- 
gree, shut out the perception of every external object, and 
even obliterated the material identity of the father, could 
claim to have been fertilised by the gods themselves. So 
great a part did the erotic impulse play in the worship of 
the mighty pagan gods that the organs of generation be- 
came for a time the emblems of the divine immanence in 
the human being, and were worshipped as such in all the 
temples in the great Oriental nations. Chastity came to be 
regarded as little short of criminal; and the constant exer- 
cise of an impulse that essentially set at naught the social 
amenities of a civilised state of existence, became at once 
the highest prerogative and the most insistent obligation of 
the human being. So permanent was the impression made 
on human society and human morals that as late as 450 
years before Christ — that is to say, after the end of the 
Archaic period, and when the Hellenic Racial movement 
was at its zenith — Herodotus was an eye-witness in Baby- 
lon of the strange and revolting custom which ordained 
that every woman should begin her adult life by an act of 
public prostitution with a stranger in one of the temples. 
The Harem system, with its rigid separation of the sexes 
in ordinary social life, and its rigorous emphasis of the pro- 
prietary rights of the patriarchal head of the family in his 
women-folk, set a certain limit to the promiscuous mating 
of the sexes. But the reader must bear in mind that in the 
tempestuous atmosphere of those times, when a state of war 
was far more common than peace, and justice and equity 
were constantly set at naught by violence, the safeguard 


60 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

afforded by the Harem system was not nearly so great as 
might appear. And though in the still later religions of 
the Hindoos and the Persians a new spirit becomes mani- 
fest which condemns promiscuous immorality, this interdic- 
tion was a mere shadow, and was only intended to apply 
to those adepts in mystical science who made it their ideal 
to attain to the highest possible level of self-exaltation. In 
general, the Vedic laws permitted the freest indulgence in 
sexual matters; they allowed any number of wives, and 
legalised seven or eight forms of marriage, so that every 
possible form of sexual union was in some measure sanc- 
tioned and rendered respectable, even that which results 
from the forcible rape of an unwilling woman. 

In short, it is clear that the high-grade civilisation of the 
old Egyptian Kingdom entirely disappeared during the sub- 
sequent three thousand years of the Archaic period of 
human evolution. The actual conditions of life which 
were governed by the elaborate organisations of the later 
empires were no longer conditions of civilisation, but con- 
ditions of the most unmitigated barbarism. Men were 
still, it is true, welded into huge corporate masses by force 
and superstition; but that was all that remained to them of 
civilisation. It is no wonder that the organisations which 
held these societies together were massive and elaborate; 
for the more heterogeneous a society, the more it consists of 
separate classes differing in position, and the more it is 
honeycombed with institutions which are hostile to the true 
spirit of civilisation, so much more complex and elaborate 
must be the organisation that can maintain its social unity. 
But however admirable as examples of human thought 
and ingenuity the laws and regulations that maintained the 
social unity of these later empires may be, we cannot be 
blind to the fact that they only served to feed international 


THE GENERIC WAVE 61 

savagery, to consolidate civic injustice, and to sanctify per- 
sonal brutality. 

The same retrogression, visible in all that relates to the 
moral aspects of civilisation, took place also in the domain 
of material knowledge and culture. The great mechanical 
achievements and the high artistic capacity of the early 
Dynastic Egyptians are too well known to need detailed 
description. Their temples, tombs, pyramids and palaces, 
their ships, their irrigating works, their implements of 
compounded metals, their statues, their literature — even 
the toys that we find buried with them — give us a glimpse 
of a considerable material knowledge, and a scientific ap- 
preciation of certain laws and principles of the physical 
world which, for reasons that will be fully discussed later 
on, was probably far greater than appears from the mere 
enumeration of these mechanical achievements. Through- 
out the whole of the Archaic period there was not made 
the slightest addition to this material equipment; it grad- 
ually disintegrated and vanished; and the later Races, the 
Indians and Persians, who were most highly developed 
from a religious point of view, have left behind them abso- 
lutely nothing that is comparable to the great mechanical 
achievements, the material culture, and the high art of the 
early Dynastic Egyptians. Even in nations like Egypt 
and Babylonia, where the inherited achievements of past 
ages were so massive as to enable them to survive the lapse 
of time and to be copied by succeeding generations, every- 
thing points to the complete stagnation of the objective in- 
telligence of man. There is no indication in the material 
productions of the later times, which are obviously mod- 
elled on those of the earlier period, of any wider grasp over 
the forces and materials of nature; there are no signs of 
any discovery during this enormous lapse of time of new 


62 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


laws of nature or principles of mechanical art, or proper- 
ties of the different forms of matter. If we consider the 
material circumstances of the most civilised nations at the 
time when the temple of Solomon was built, there is noth- 
ing in any of their works, nothing in their means of locomo- 
tion and manner of intercourse, nothing in their armament 
for battle, nothing in their means of production, nothing 
in their arts and industries, nothing in their tools and imple- 
ments, nothing in the ways and means by which they car- 
ried on the daily business of life, nothing in their provision 
against the numerous afflictions to which human beings are 
liable; there is nothing, in one word, in their whole material 
equipment which indicates a wider grasp over the forces and 
materials of Nature than that which the early Egyptians 
and Babylonians possessed three thousand years before. 
There may have been novel applications of old principles 
in expressing new ideas and meeting the requirements of 
later ages; but not one jot was added to the material basis 
of their science. Far from extending, indeed, the objective 
intelligence which had created this material equipment ap- 
pears to have become disorganised in the course of time. 
The ancient knowledge lingered on in the form of cabalistic 
formulae, but these were blindly obeyed as emanations of 
divine power, and were not at all understood in their orig- 
inal meaning. 

Thus it is clear that the old theory that the history of 
humanity represents nothing more than a continuous pro- 
gression from a brute condition of the uttermost social, 
moral, and mental incompetence to the material civilisation 
and culture of the present day, is fundamentally wrong. 
Its hold on the philosophers who first tried to deal with the 
problem of human evolution in a positive spirit was due to 
the fact that in their day the historical perspective of 


THE GENERIC WAVE 


63 


human evolution was limited to the three thousand years 
during, which this kind of progression was actually taking 
place. In the light of our more extended knowledge, it is 
evident that the development of humanity is a very much 
more complicated process than it has hitherto appeared 
to be. 

In feelings, manners, and morals, the Egyptians of the 
Old Kingdom were as far removed from the brute as we 
are to-day; and their civilisation was as close to the modem 
ideal of that state as our own. This fact is in itself 
sufficiently startling; but the subsequent progression of 
events during the Archaic period of three thousand years 
that followed is still more remarkable. That humanity 
during these ages should have gaily fouled under foot the 
splendid endowment of material civilisation and culture 
which it had acquired or inherited, despite the civilising 
influence of the several Racial movements through which 
the whole progression took place, is a fact of the most tre- 
mendous significance, which cannot be explained by any 
theory of evolution that has hitherto been suggested. 

Evidently the problem presented to us by the history of 
Mankind is not what it has hitherto seemed to be. Instead 
of trying to discern, in the sequences of events presented to 
our view, the successive stages of a process of evolution 
which has carried humanity from the depths of savagery to 
the heights of civilisation, we have now to study these 
sequences with the object of determining the nature and the 
reason of that cosmic process which succeeded in paralysing 
the civilising influence of each Racial movement, and 
caused humanity to foul under foot its splendid endowment 
of material civilisation and culture, during the first three 
thousand years of its historical development. 

The reader must clearly understand that during these 


64 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

three thousand years there was no absence of mental activ- 
ity, nor was the retrogression in everything that relates to 
material civilisation and culture due to a decay of the 
human Race, or to the absence of developmental energy. 
On the contrary, it was a period during which there were 
recurrent phases of the most intense productive and con- 
structive energy. It was a period wherein insignificant 
communities reared themselves up into vast and mighty 
empires; wherein great works were produced in such num- 
bers, and of such vast proportions, that our minds reel with 
amazement at the extravagant expenditure of energy ap- 
parent in their construction, though we see only ruins that 
represent but an infinitesimal part of what they were in 
their pride and glory; and wherein, finally, the human mind 
was constantly giving birth to new phases of consciousness 
which made vast masses of human beings restless wanderers, 
and filled them with passions and ambitions and ecstasies 
by the side of which our fiercest emotions are but pale 
shadows. These new phases of consciousness expressed 
themselves in the monstrous and mysterious cults of Ori- 
ental paganism, which governed humanity during this long 
period of human history, before Judaism achieved its great 
revelation. Throughout the whole of this period, indeed, 
there was undoubtedly taking place a great evolutionary 
development, but this development manifested itself simply 
in the production of religious ideas. From the earliest 
times, when it engendered the terrifying belief that malig- 
nant supernatural beings dwelt in every object in nature, to 
a period many thousands of years later when it culminated 
in the stupendous and inhuman subjectivity of the Brahmin 
religion, this development was continuously in progress, 
carried onwards step by step in each successive period of cre- 
ative energy in ancient Oriental history. 


THE GENERIC WAVE 


65 

The historical perspective of human evolution, therefore, 
discloses to us two phases. In the first, a progressive process 
of religious ideation grips the individual with increasing 
force, and completely overwhelms civilisation in its efforts 
to provide for the worship of the gods. In the second, the 
religious development loses its vigour, gradually decays, and 
allows civilisation once more to establish itself on its old 
basis. Since all the effects produced are the result of the 
two phases of this religious development, it is obviously the 
latter which has determined the historical progression of 
Mankind. The form of the development is a very remark- 
able one. The form is that of a wave, or of a movement 
governed by the growth and decay of a living organism. It 
is a mode of progresssion which has propagated itself 
throughout a series of Racial movements, as a single and 
continuous development from a definite point of origin, en- 
tirely independent of the volition, the material interests, or 
the experience of the individuals affected by it. It is there- 
fore a mode of progression determined by a cosmic process of 
evolution which is, in fact, simply a larger edition of the 
same process that determines the unity of a Racial move- 
ment. 

In the next chapter we shall define clearly the nature of 
the material endowment which humanity has gained as the 
result of this cosmic process of evolution. 


CHAPTER IV 


MATERIAL DEPOSIT OF GENERIC WAVE 

If we contrast our state with that of the early Egyptians, 
it is clear that there has taken place in the intervening ages 
an expansion of intelligence which endows us human beings 
of the present day with an enormously extended grasp over 
the forces and materials of Nature. In this, and not in the 
quality of civilisation, or in the moral characteristics of 
man, has there occurred a real and indisputable advance. 
It is certain that the principles of civilisation and of 
morality were as well understood and practised by those 
ancient peoples as they are by ourselves. It is still more 
obvious, if we compare our material equipment with theirs, 
that our grasp over the forces and materials of Nature is in- 
calculably greater than that which they possessed. 

Now how has this expansion of objective intelligence 
taken place? 

It must have taken place in one of two ways; either by 
the influence of time, and the experience which time brings 
on the same mind-organ as created the mechanical equip- 
ment of the early Egyptians, or by the growth of a new 
mind-organ of higher capacity. 

It is scarcely necessary to apologise at the present day 
for the use of the term mind-organ; for the correlation of 
mental and nervous processes is one of the most definitely 
established facts in the categories of modern science. If the 
cautious enquirer still hesitates on the threshold of the 
view that all forms of consciousness are definitely caused by 
the physiological activity of a specialised mass of brain- 

66 


MATERIAL DEPOSIT OF GENERIC WAVE 67 

cells, it is simply because at the point to which scientific 
demonstration has been carried in these matters, there still 
exists a difficulty in including within the scope of physiolog- 
ical causation the occurrence of certain states of mind, par- 
ticularly those involving spiritual conceptions. This diffi- 
culty is far from being insurmountable; but it does not 
vitally concern us at the present moment. No such diffi- 
culty exists with regard to the purely objective phase of 
consciousness. The reader may study the demonstration 
of the physiological causation of such mental processes as 
perception, cognition, and intellection in any elementary 
text-book. Impressions that come to us from without must, 
before they are transmuted into conscious ideas and judg- 
ments, lose themselves in a turmoil of physiological activ- 
ity; and the resulting presentations in consciousness are 
clearly caused by this physiological activity. This propo- 
sition must needs be accepted by everybody who is inclined 
to look at things from a scientific point of view. And it is 
particularly for 'this reason that I have been careful, in 
drawing the reader’s attention to the mental development 
which has taken place since the days of the early Egyptians, 
to base the conception of this development simply on a con- 
trast between the objective mental capacity which produced 
the material equipment of the Early Egyptians, and that 
which has placed at the service of modern humanity the 
stupendous grasp over the forces and materials of Nature 
which is exemplified in all the arts and industries of the 
present day. Here it is clear we have to deal with the 
capacity of a mind-organ. And the question which lies 
before us is this: is the wider grasp over the forces and 
materials of Nature that we possess due simply to a con- 
tinued education of the same mind-organ which produced 
the material equipment of the early Egyptians; or is it due 


68 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

to the development of a new mind-organ of higher ca- 
pacity? 

If it is due simply to the education of the same mind- 
organ brought about, let us say, through a growing percep- 
tion on the part of the individual of the things that were 
calculated to enhance the pleasures and mitigate the miseries 
of his existence, and a determination to exercise to the full 
what powers he possessed with the object of acquiring them, 
then it is clear that no cosmic process of evolution has been 
involved in the development. It would simply resolve 
itself into an effect of the action of time, with the experi- 
ence that it brings, on a mind-organ already trained to serve 
the material interests of the individual by the Racial 
instinct. 

But it is perfectly certain from the historical evidence 
that we possess, that the development in question was not 
of this nature, and that it did not effect itself in this man- 
ner. For if it were simply a matter of time, it would have 
manifested itself at once, and continuously throughout the 
next four thousand years; and the rate of visible progress 
during any one period would be the same as that of any 
other period of equal duration. And everybody knows that 
this is not so. There has been more visible progress of the 
kind during the last hundred years — nay, it would be cor- 
rect to say during the last twenty — than during the whole 
preceding seventy centuries; and every fresh glimpse which 
archseology affords us into the conditions of the past renders 
more certain the probability that, during the first forty cen- 
turies of this great total, there was no such progress what- 
ever. 

Not only was the objective intelligence of man sup- 
pressed during the whole of the Archaic period, but it was 
a long time even in the Modern period of human develop- 


MATERIAL DEPOSIT OF GENERIC WAVE 69 

ment before this objective intelligence began to produce any 
very considerable fruit. And yet it is clear that at the end 
of the Archaic period, when the Jews and the Greeks came 
into existence, the physical basis of that objective intelli- 
gence was already fully formed. The intellectual pre- 
eminence of the Greeks is admitted by everybody, and it is 
evident from the manner with which they handled the phy- 
sical problems on which they touched, that their objective 
intelligence was of the same quality as ours, although its 
grasp of the realities of the external world was rudimentary, 
and therefore incapable of producing the results that have 
been effected in these later days. But this fact is still more 
definitely proved by that extraordinary position of the Jews 
throughout the Modern period of human development, 
which is really one of the most striking phenomena of 
human history. The reader must bear in mind that the 
Jewish race is one of the very purest, in the sense that 
whilst many Jews have, at different periods of the world’s 
history, dropped away from the Jewish fold and became 
lost amongst alien peoples, very few, if any, aliens have 
ever penetrated into the Jewish fold and become sufficiently 
part of the race to intermarry with them. Now, according 
to the Law of Racial Movements, all development ceases 
at the end of the period of developmental activity, and 
the zenith of the Jewish Racial movement was somewhere 
about 1,000 years before Christ, and it completely came to 
an end somewhere about 500 years before Christ. There- 
fore, after the latter date, there could have occurred no 
further structural growth in those Jews who remained 
true to the ritual and rigid separation enforced by their re- 
ligion, and in the Jewish mind of to-day we have practically 
operative a physical basis which in bulk is identically the 
same as that of the Jewish race at the time when the 


70 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

temple of Solomon is supposed to have been built. Now 
throughout the whole Modern period of human develop- 
ment, as is well known, the Jewish Race has produced 
men who have in each successive Racial movement 
proved themselves to be the intellectual mates of the best 
men that that movement has produced ; and as the European 
mind has gone through its successive phases of development, 
and has in each stage shown a greater proof of a higher 
degree of objective intelligence, the Jew has easily kept 
pace with him, and has shown in every department of mod- 
ern objective thought that he can produce as good work as 
any European. Therefore, it is absolutely clear, in spite of 
the fact that there appeared no evidence of growth of an 
objective intelligence during the four thousand years of the 
Archaic period of development, that at the end of that 
period of development the physical basis of our Modern 
objective intelligence was completely formed. These con- 
siderations lead us inevitably to the conclusion that the 
great advance in our grasp over the materials and forces of 
Nature at the present day has not been the result of a mere 
education of the same mind-organ that produced the ma- 
terial equipment of the early Egyptians, but that during 
the whole Archaic period there was taking place a growth 
of new brain cells which later on became the physical basis 
of the higher objective intelligence of modern times. These 
cells, during the Archaic period itself, did not behave as the 
physical basis of an objective intelligence must behave, but 
produced instead the subjective intelligence that gave rise 
to the pagan religions. And they behaved in this way be- 
cause there was no communication between them and the 
external world. They were formed and lay in the grey 
matter of the brain, barred from contact with the outside 
world by the pre-existing mind-organ, and it was not until 


MATERIAL DEPOSIT OF GENERIC WAVE 71 

the psychic activity of this pre-existing mind-organ had 
been suppressed that they could enter into that relation with 
the outside world which was absolutely essential to their 
continued existence after the period of Generic growth was 
at an end. 

The most casual study of the records of humanity reveals 
the fact that men have not always behaved mentally as they 
do to-day, at any rate amongst the modern progressive races. 
Take, for instance, any one of the important episodes 
of the Old Testament, and you will see at once that men 
received impressions, elaborated them, expressed them, and 
finally acted on them, in quite a different manner from that 
of the present day. I say the Old Testament, because that 
is a record that is familiar to all of us. As a matter of fact, 
however, this kind of mental behaviour is not peculiar to the 
people of whom the Old Testament tells us; but is found to 
have been common to all the peoples of the old historic 
world; that world in which lived the old Egyptians, the 
Chaldeans, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Persians, the 
Brahmins, and others besides the Israelites; and which 
lasted for at least 4,000 or 5,000 years. If one of us arose 
in the morning and declared to everybody whom it might 
concern that some god or other had spoken to him overnight 
and bidden him to do something; if, on being directed to set 
about a certain business, he declared himself unable to do 
so before he had consulted the entrails of a dying bird, or 
subjected himself to some other form of inspirational guid- 
ance, without in the least regarding the circumstances or the 
necessities of the business in question; if, on being requested 
to describe a certain fact or event, he launched forth into a 
dramatic narration of phantastic dimensions; and if he 
based his actions, not on reasonable motives, but on the 
blind impulse of the moment, he would be reckoned by us 


72 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

a lunatic. He would certainly not be able to live in har- 
mony with modern society, and any business or under- 
taking managed by him would be sure to end dis- 
astrously. Yet this was the way these old-world people 
behaved for nearly 5,000 years, and they lived in har- 
monious societies, and carried on great enterprises with com- 
plete success. 

This is a fact beyond dispute. And it brings us to one 
of two conclusions — either the phenomenal world of Nature 
was different in those days, or the mind of man, which re- 
ceives impressions from that world, behaved in a different 
manner. 

The first conclusion was the one commonly held for a 
very long time. At the present day, however, at any rate 
amongst the modern races, such a supposition is generally 
rejected. The whole structure of the modern world would 
be seriously damaged if such an idea were entertained. A 
period of diligent observation extending over 2,500 years 
has gradually convinced us that the Laws of Nature are 
eternal and unchangeable; our modes of thought, our ac- 
tions, and all the precautions with which we surround our 
daily lives, are based on this assumption; so that, whatever 
was different in those days it was certainly not the phenom- 
enal world of Nature. 

At any rate, this is the only conclusion to which the sci- 
entist can come. And since this is so, one might reasonably 
expect to find in modern psychology a recognition of the 
two possible phases of mental action, and a statement of 
their relations. For Psychology is the science that aims at 
a scientific exposition of what can be known and verified by 
observation of the functions of the human mind. It should 
therefore be built up on an observation of mental modes of 
behaviour throughout the whole length of time during 


MATERIAL DEPOSIT OF GENERIC WAVE 73 

which it has been in existence. It should certainly take 
note of the mode of behaviour during the old historic era, 
which culminated with the advent of the Jews; for the 
mental idiosyncrasies of that time were very prominent and 
of great importance; they are marked by the huge monu- 
ments of antiquity that cover some lands — things that you 
cannot well ignore, if you do observe anything at all; and 
the wisdom accumulated with those habits of mind, and 
expressed in that dramatic fashion which was one of those 
idiosyncrasies, still remains to-day interwoven with every 
act and thought of our conscious lives. 

Yet, as a matter of fact, modern psychology has com- 
pletely ignored this vast field of research. The result is, 
that it still does not exist as an accurate science. It repre- 
sents only a chaotic medley of facts, derived partly from 
introspection, partly from limited observation of the habits 
of the Western mind, partly from the study of what are 
called occult mental phenomena, and partly from physiolog- 
ical experiments. Psychologists rival each other in strain- 
ing their imaginations in the effort of building up out of this 
medley a fair-seeming exposition of the structure and mode 
of action of the human mind. But they all seem equally to 
lack the perception that the main nourishment of a real sci- 
ence is observation and not imagination. 

There are whole nations existing in Asia to-day that 
reveal in the midst of the rags and tatters of thirty centuries 
of decay, the mental idiosyncrasy of their ancestry, bereft 
of its pristine intensity. Between them and us there yawns 
a gulf. We cannot easily understand them, or their ways, 
or the motives that impel them to action ; whilst their man- 
ner of expressing even the commonest ideas strikes us as 
strange, exaggerated, and very often deliberately false. 
Does not this gulf, which no amount of education on the one 


74 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

side and of painstaking industry on the other, seem ade- 
quate to bridge over, indicate contrasts in mental activity 
which it is worth our while to investigate? This mind- 
organ of ours is the latest product of evolution. It is 
changing in every individual and every race, and it has been 
thus changing ever since the time when it first began to de- 
velop. How, then, is it possible to deduce the laws that 
regulate its growth and its functions from the introspective 
study of a single individual, or the objective study of a 
single group of individuals? How is it possible, if you re- 
gard it as a stationary and a completely-formed entity, to 
give in any representation of its functions that sense of 
movement which is the essential attribute of its position in 
evolution, and stamps it with a character different from that 
of every other organ in the human body? 

The modern progressive races have for a long time dom- 
inated the world, and during the last two thousand years 
and more they have consequently impressed their mode of 
mental activity to a greater or lesser degree on humanity in 
general, so that at present all mankind simulates more or 
less the objective type of mental activity which is peculiarly 
characteristic of the modern races. Yet the Eastern mind 
at the present day is admittedly somewhat of an enigma to 
the Western who has not been bred amongst Eastern 
people — how much more of an enigma, therefore, must the 
pure Archaic behaviour of the earliest historical races appear 
to the biologist, who is above all things modern in his 
point of view, and who, moreover, has never dived very 
deeply into psychological questions, and — in the majority 
of instances — has had no experience of Eastern peoples at 
all. He is to be excused if, in his eyes, the Archaic phe- 
nomena represent nothing more valuable to the scientist 
than phenomena of fraud and delusion. But, unfortu- 


MATERIAL DEPOSIT OF GENERIC WAVE 75 

nately, the anthropologist has followed tamely in the foot- 
steps of the biologist, and, in constructing his scheme of 
the growth of man, has neglected the particular phase of 
human development represented by the ancient civilisations 
of Asia, and has sought for the origin of our civilisation and 
our intellectual attributes principally, if not wholly, 
amongst the debris of the savage and primitive Races of 
humanity. And the psychologist, again, has obediently fol- 
lowed in the footsteps of the anthropologist, with the 
astounding result that the Archaic form of mentation, which 
has dominated human beings of the highest class for several 
thousands of years, and which underlies and constantly de- 
termines and interferes with modern forms of thought and 
action, has been utterly ignored in the scientific psychology 
of the day. 

This is equivalent to saying that we have no real or ade- 
quate science of psychology. There can be no science where 
all the facts of a certain class have not been equally investi- 
gated and drawn upon for the purpose of generalisation. 
We need not wonder if at the present day, mystical forms 
of psychology find more favour in the eyes of the educated 
multitude than the productions distinguished by the ortho- 
dox stamp of the all-powerful arbiter of modern thought. 
On all sides are exhibited cravings for knowledge and un- 
derstanding of the deeper elements of the human mind, 
which find no satisfaction in orthodox formulae, and give 
sustenance to all kinds of false generalisations based on un- 
scientific expositions of those very things that science has 
ignored. 

The purpose of this work compels us, therefore, to formu- 
late new ideas on psychology, based on a more generous and 
adequate recognition of all the facts that make up, or have 
had any part in the making up, of human nature. We can- 


76 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

not attempt to study the history of the human mind, if we 
have not a very definite idea of the different phases of con- 
sciousness of which that mind is capable. 

Now let us consider a little more carefully the essential 
features and the essential differences of these two forms of 
mentation that we have called respectively the Archaic and 
the Modern. And in the first place before anything is said 
about the Archaic phase of consciousness, let us clearly un- 
derstand what is the special feature of the Modern form of 
mentation. It will be best to demonstrate this by a series 
of concise questions and answers that will be intelligible to 
everyone. 

On what does our higher intelligence of the present day 
feed itself On the observation of objects and their modes 
of behaviour in Nature. 

From what are derived the ideas of Time and Space by 
which our higher intelligence classifies the data on which 
are based all its operations? From the succession of events 
and the distribution of objects in Nature. 

What is it that governs that central operation of our 
higher intelligence that we call reason? The analogies and 
similarities of objects and their modes of behaviour in 
Nature. 

How do we express the conclusions of that central opera- 
tion of the higher intelligence? We express these conclu- 
sions in terms of the objects and their modes of behaviour 
in Nature. 

What conditions and determines the actions that result 
from the stimulation of our higher intelligence? The 
actions are conditioned and determined by the nature and 
the dimensions of the very objects or their modes of be- 
haviour in Nature that have been observed. 

The special feature of the Modern form of mentation, 


MATERIAL DEPOSIT OF GENERIC WAVE 77 

therefore, is that it is based on a direct communion betwixt 
the higher intelligence and the object; so that in all its oper- 
ations it is limited and governed by the nature, the dimen- 
sions, and the analogies of the object and its mode of be- 
haviour. Every mental operation, in its simplest form, 
consists of three parts, an in-going, a central, and an out- 
going part; and in each of these, in the Modern phase of 
consciousness, it is the sensations directly derived from ob- 
jects, or their representations in memory, which form the 
units of consciousness; giving to these three parts the forms 
of observation, reason, and intellectual expression or useful 
action. That this is so will be at once seen if we analyse 
any ordinary incident in our lives that is carried out in what 
we call a reasonable manner. A man, for example, sees a 
chair in a shop-window — his attention becomes fixed by the 
remembrance that it is just such a chair that he wants — he 
observes the chair carefully to make sure that it is of a 
certain make and value — he learns from the shopman what 
he will be expected to give in return for it — joining these 
data to others with which he is already acquainted, bearing 
on the market value of chairs in general, or of chairs of the 
same class, and also bearing on the proportion that the con- 
templated expenditure holds to his income, he comes to a 
conclusion, by a process that we call reasoning, as to 
whether he will buy that chair or not; and he finally com- 
pletes the transaction by an exchange for that chair of a 
sum equivalent to its value. 

Now this is what we call a reasonable and business-like 
transaction. It is to be noted that every mental movement 
in it is generated, determined, and concluded by some exist- 
ing object or fact, or its representative in memory. 
Neither intuition nor imagination is made use of, nor are 
any emotional feelings allowed to influence the procedure. 


78 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

And no one will deny that all the business of our world at 
the present day, whether it be commercial, political, socio- 
logical, legal, medical, or scientific, is carried out in this 
manner. In other words, the Modern form of mentation is 
a purely objective one. Everything of which this Modern 
phase of consciousness takes note, whether it be a feeling or 
a fact, is regarded objectively. It does not merely regard 
certain things, but all things that exist, as objective; and 
the existence of things that are not objective it does not 
recognise at all. The Universe and all that it contains 
affect it as things that can be observed, reasoned upon, and 
expressed in objective terms; nothing exists for it that can- 
not thus be observed, reasoned upon, and expressed. The 
reader must clearly understand that its special feature is not 
the kind of things with which it deals, but the way in which 
it deals with all things. And this way of dealing with 
them is the result of the fact that in the Modern phase of 
consciousness, the higher intelligence actually grasps that 
which lights up the conscious illumination; or, to put it in 
other and more explicit terms, the highest ganglia of the 
mind-organ are continuously in direct conscious communica- 
tion with that which originated sensation, and nothing 
occurs to sever this connection during the whole course of a 
mental operation. 

And if we look backwards across the ages we find that at 
least for the last 3,000 years, ever since the beginning of 
the Greek Racial movement, the form of mentation that has 
dominated the progress of the world — gradually insinuating 
itself into all the crevices of our social structure and formu- 
lating itself into concrete laws for the regulation of our in- 
dividual lives — has always been of this objective stamp. 
It is the further protrusion of this objective activity into the 
elemental masses of the inert universe which has so changed 


MATERIAL DEPOSIT OF GENERIC WAVE 


79 


the aspect of the world during these years. As a result, 
our environment of the present day is one only in harmony 
with the mind-organ in its objective phase of consciousness. 
We are becoming more and more objective creatures; but 
we also live in an objective world wherein mental powers 
that are not objective are losing their practical value. We 
measure mental force by practical results, whether in the re- 
gion of thought or of action ; and even a poet we insist shall 
express himself clearly and intelligibly in the symbols of the 
objective world if he is to win our applause. 

Together with this higher intelligence which is distinctly 
objective, however, Modern consciousness reveals traces of 
another form of intelligence which feeds itself, not on obser- 
vation, but on suggestion, elaborates its conclusions, not by 
reason but by dramatic imagination, and expresses itself, 
not in terms of the objects and their modes of behaviour in 
Nature, but in terms of the subject’s feelings. To this 
form of consciousness belong intuition, faith, and inspira- 
tion. It is characterised by the fact that it is not based on 
the knowledge of events and objects in Nature, but simply 
on the states of feeling evoked in the subject indirectly by 
these things. It is therefore subjective, and operates in 
quite a different manner from the other; being in particu- 
lar governed by no accurate ideas of time and space. In 
modern times this form of consciousness is allowed little 
scope for action, and for the last 3,000 years, from domi- 
nating the whole sphere of human life, this scope has been 
getting ever more limited. It is not allowed to intrude it- 
self in the government of the state, in the making and 
administration of the laws, in the preparation and direction 
of armies and fleets, in the conduct of commercial business, 
in the care and treatment of the sick and wounded. It still 
bulks largely in the mental composition of a large number 


80 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

of individuals, especially in women; and for all of us still 
forms the matrix from which springs the sentiment of our 
lives. But those in whom it bulks largely, in excess of the 
objective intellect, are not the individuals that lead the 
world at the present day. We recognise them as intel- 
lectual weaklings, who mask their condition with the mas- 
sive wisdom of a past age, a massive wisdom that was sub- 
jective but ill fits their shrunken forms. In other words, 
the Subjective form of consciousness is in the Modern form 
of mentation inferior to the Objective. 

The higher intelligence of man, indeed, was not always 
in direct conscious communion with the outside world. 
There was a time when the higher intelligence, the intelli- 
gence which dominated and directed the individual in all 
actions above the level of an automatic habit, existed 
only in a subjective state; and had no capacity, there- 
fore, for picturing in itself the facts and objects which 
make up the realm of Nature. In this subjective state, 
the higher intelligence had, therefore, to feed itself, 
to elaborate its conclusions, and to express itself, in a totally 
distinct manner. It fed itself by intuition, it elaborated 
its conclusions by dramatising the relations of the different 
feelings impressed on it, and it expressed these feelings by 
projecting them into the objective world as images of it- 
self, or of its constituent elements. Its influence caused 
the individual to enter into ecstatic states of repose or of 
activity, undetermined and scarcely conditioned by the 
facts of his surroundings. It possessed no measure for time 
or for space apart from the content of its own feelings; it 
had therefore no accurate ideas either of the distribution of 
objects in space, or of the succession of events in time. It 
received its impressions from the outside world indirectly 
through an objective intelligence of lower intellectual 


MATERIAL DEPOSIT OF GENERIC WAVE 81 


capacity, the activity of which it was constantly engaged in 
obstructing. 

This is what I call the Archaic form of mentation. It 
reveals itself clearly in the Old Testament. The latter 
gives us the picture of a people who, in all the operations of 
their higher intelligence, lived in a state of detachment from 
Nature. They professed to receive all their knowledge, 
their power, and their direction from a source distinct from 
and infinitely above the objects and facts of Nature that 
appealed to their senses. We know, as a matter of fact, 
that they never applied their higher intelligence — that in- 
telligence which was not inferior to our own — to the study 
of Nature. The ideal of their wise men was not observa- 
tion of Nature but communion with God; in other words, 
an ecstatic condition of inward contemplation. The appli- 
cation of the higher intelligence for the purpose of observa- 
tion was, indeed, not merely neglected; it was distinctly 
prohibited and regarded as one of the greatest of all sins. 
Accurate observations of any intellectual magnitude were 
not conceivable apart from an evil purpose. David was 
condemned for trying to take a census of his people, a 
measure which we regard at the present day as not merely 
reasonable, but absolutely necessary for the proper govern- 
ment of a state. The higher intelligence, indeed, at this 
period, spurned under foot the senses, and the mind of the 
“natural man” with which they were in direct conscious con- 
nection, as ignorant, foolish, and wicked. Truth could not 
enter through these channels, nor understanding dwell in 
them; and whenever anything out of the common presented 
itself to the individual, his higher intelligence instantly 
flooded his mind with an overwhelming sense of awe, com- 
pelling him to seal his senses, and to stand still or retire, 
lest he should commit sacrilege by gazing on that which 


82 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

was above the comprehension of these sensuous faculties. 

If at the present day a man of highly developed mental 
power standing, in fact, considerably above the average, 
were to see a bush on fire which nevertheless did not burn 
away, he would assuredly, after a momentary feeling of awe 
and wonder, advance and observe the process and all that 
belonged to it very accurately. .He would do so because 
the phenomenon would directly stimulate his higher intelli- 
gence to activity; and his higher intelligence, being objec- 
tive, would manifest this activity by increased observation. 
But see what happened in the case of Moses. He saw a 
bush on fire which did not burn away, and this sensuous 
perception was followed at first by the desire to observe. 
He said to himself: “I will now turn aside, and see this 
great sight, why the bush is not burnt.” But no sooner 
had this objective impulse manifested itself than from an 
influence emanating from a higher intelligence of what was 
taking place he was compelled to stand still and to hide 
his face. 

Here is a psychological picture, expressed not as we 
should express it, but in terms of the subjective mind, 
which is admirable and of the very highest importance to 
us in our present enquiry. It is a picture of the sequence 
of mental events which took place in every mind in the 
Archaic phase of consciousness, when it was brought into 
the presence of a thing — or an aspect of a thing — above 
the ordinary. It explains to us most accurately, even 
though the explanation is clothed in figurative language, 
the mechanism involved in this inhibition of observation, 
which is so marked a characteristic of the Archaic form of 
mentation, and separates it broadly from the Modern. As 
Moses behaved, so did all men behave from the Early 
Egyptians to the Hebrews, so does every unsophisticated 


MATERIAL DEPOSIT OF GENERIC WAVE 83 

Asiatic still behave at the present day. An observation is 
made of a low order of intellectual capacity, an intuition 
or emotional intelligence of a higher order establishes itself 
and evokes a sense of awe, which at once inhibits further 
observation. 

Hence the Subjective condition of the higher intelligence 
in the Archaic form of mentation. And here let me state, 
in case it should be said that I have no right to base a scien- 
tific exposition on the story of Moses, that it is perfectly 
immaterial to us in the present connection whether the story 
is authentic, whether Moses did see a burning bush that did 
not burn away, or whether indeed Moses ever existed at 
all. What is important for us, as scientists, is the descrip- 
tion in the highest literature of that period of how a certain 
thing happened. The story of Moses is an account of how 
a certain man was led to undertake a great enterprise; an 
account which was accepted as truthful by the people of 
that period. It furnishes us with a sequence of mental 
events which was evidently a familiar one to the people of 
that period. To say that the story involves the miracu- 
lous and supernatural is simply to say that the miraculous 
and supernatural did exist for the people of that period. 
And we have not to deny this fact, but to find out how it 
was that the miraculous and supernatural did exist for these 
people, whose mental calibre was neither less nor greater 
than ours, although they do not exist for us. Nor is this 
story the only example of this sequence of mental events, 
nor does the life of Moses or even the history of the Jews 
constitute the only sources which furnish us with such in- 
stances. The whole history of humanity from the time of 
the early Egyptians to that of the Greeks — a period of 
several thousands of years — bears witness to the truth of the 
sequence of mental events illustrated by the story of Moses, 


84 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

Its peculiar value as an illustration lies in this, that it is so 
familiar to all of us. 

Let us clearly understand, therefore, that in the Archaic 
form of mentation, the higher intelligence only received 
from the outside world suggestions of things which revealed 
themselves in consciousness as intuitions. Immediately on 
the appearance in consciousness of these intuitions, the 
lower intelligence was prevented from receiving any fur- 
ther impressions. Hence in the Archaic form of mentation 
the second or central stage of a mental operation, that of 
elaboration, would proceed independently of the real modes 
of behaviour, and the real analogies and associations of 
objects in Nature; because, during this second stage, it was 
shut off entirely from Nature. The intuitions received into 
consciousness would therefore group themselves, and their 
relations to each other and to pre-existing intuitions would 
become established, not with any reference to facts or laws 
of Nature, but simply with reference to the constitution of 
the higher intelligence, and to the laws of its own develop- 
ment and activity. We may put it this way, that in this 
central part of the subjective mental operation, the actual 
substance, condition, or process which produces the subjec- 
tive phase would reveal itself in consciousness. But such 
a revelation, as we have seen, is only possible as the result 
of a conflict betwixt the two sets of mind-elements; the 
higher intelligence suppressing the lower, and keeping it 
sealed against the intrusion of any fresh perceptions that 
might distract attention and cause the revelation to abort. 
The revelation, therefore, would have to take place in a 
state of consciousness already conditioned and determined 
by the uncertainties, the suspense, the tension and the fluc- 
tuations of this psychical struggle for existence. Hence we 
should expect to find the grouping of intuitions in the cen- 


MATERIAL DEPOSIT OF GENERIC WAVE 85 

tral stage of a subjective mental process to assume a dra- 
matic form — the elements of each group acting on each 
other as if engaged in a struggle, or at least con- 
verging to participation in a single event, which is to be 
determinative of their existence. And this is exactly what 
we do find to have been the case in the Archaic form of 
mentation. This is what happened in the case of Moses, 
in whose mind, instead of a process of reasoning following 
observation — that is to say, instead of a process involving a 
progressive comparison and judgment of all the bearings of 
the ideas received through observation — there occurred a 
dramatic representation in consciousness as the second stage 
of the mental operation, which had absolutely nothing to 
do with the burning bush that started it. This is what 
produced the mythologies of the great Races of Antiquity, 
which are just a series of dramatic episodes in which an 
apparently supernatural determinant of their existence — a 
determinant, that is to say, which was beyond the compre- 
hension of their sensuous and objective faculties — progress- 
ively revealed itself to their higher intelligence. And we 
must remember that these mythologies were not merely 
matters of belief, which did not affect the practical every- 
day life of these men of olden times. On the contrary, 
they formed an integral part of the every-day life. Just 
as in every action of our lives that is above the level of 
an automatic habit we are guided by our reason, and by the 
laws and probabilities that have been formulated by our 
reason; so in these olden times, in every action above the 
level of an automatic habit, men were directed by the dra- 
matic faculty, or by the mythologies that this dramatic 
faculty had built up. No general led his army into action, 
no governor issued an edict, no merchant embarked in a 
commercial transaction, no man in short undertook any- 


86 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


thing of any importance without first stimulating this 
faculty by such means as invocations to the deity, the in- 
spection of omens, the consultation of oracles, or the offer- 
ing up of sacrifices, and receiving thereby a direction from 
the mental grouping dramatised in his imagination. The 
reader must clearly understand that in all operations in 
which his higher intelligence took part the man of this 
period thought in this way, by looking at a dramatised 
representation and not by following a chain of reasoning. 

We must further observe that in this dramatised repre- 
sentation of intuitional groupings, the intuitions themselves 
became personified. It is this personification of intuitions 
in the Archaic form of mentation that has given to the 
Archaic world in general some of its most striking features. 
Nor is it at all difficult to see how this personification 
arose, once we grasp the fact that in the Archaic form of 
mentation the higher intelligence was detached from Na- 
ture and expressed its own being alone in consciousness. 
In our Modern form of the central stage, which we call 
reasoning, we think of things because our higher intelli- 
gence is in direct connection with these things, causing the 
units of consciousness themselves to have the appearance 
and to act in the manner of things. But in the Archaic 
form of mentation, each intuition was primarily a unit of 
self-consciousness, full of the ecstasy of a realised sense of 
self-existence; so that it expressed itself most appropriately 
in the visualised image of an animate being. When, there- 
fore, men of that period exercised their higher intelligence, 
the psychic illumination lit up a dramatic representation in- 
volving, as its determinant figures, the visualised images of 
animate beings. 

Finally, as we should expect from what has been said, 
the third stage of a mental operation — that of action — 


MATERIAL DEPOSIT OF GENERIC WAVE 87 

was wont in the Archaic form of mentation to issue as the 
resultant of the emotion controlling the dramatic repre- 
sentation. It issued, therefore, as the outrush of an exalted 
state of self-consciousness, which had been concentrating 
itself for action under the very guise of the dramatic repre- 
sentation; a state of self-consciousness which had no knowl- 
edge of the conventions, the realities and the probabilities 
of the outside world — but only knew itself, and the neces- 
sities of its own existence. It drove the individual in a 
state of blind and ecstatic impulsion so to behave as to 
fulfil, or to give vent to, the overwhelming emotion that 
flooded his higher intelligence, and expressed itself in the 
movement of the dramatic representation. 

A good deal of light is thrown on the Archaic form of 
mentation by that which occurs in ourselves when we 
dream. In a dream a brilliant psychic illumination sud- 
denly reveals to us the forms of visualised images. We 
know as the result of careful experiments and observations 
that in every case the process is started by a sensuous im- 
pression; but the sleeper himself is not aware of the sensa- 
tion, and the visualised images do not suggest to him any 
such connection. The functions of the objective mind be- 
ing in abeyance, the sensuous impression is not recognised, 
and it passes on unchallenged, and finally transmutes itself 
into the mysterious presentation in question. There is 
nothing remarkable about the images themselves; they are 
those of objects, scenes, and figures with which we are 
familiar. Generally speaking, anything or any person that 
has prominently occupied our thoughts within a short time 
of falling asleep will be pretty sure to make his or its ap- 
pearance in the presentation; so that it is fairly obvious that 
the actual identity of these images is a fortuitous circum- 
stance; the energy of the process drawing into the range of 


88 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


the psychic illumination those images which lie uppermost 
in the storehouse of visualised impressions. 

What is remarkable is the actual fact of the psychic illu- 
mination, whilst the objective mind is obviously not work- 
ing; indicating, surely, that there is a part of the mind- 
substance that is capable of acting separately from the ob- 
jective mind-organ, and capable, moreover, of acting in 
this separate manner with great intensity; for the psychic 
illumination of a dream-process is very intense, far more 
intense than that which attends the visualisation of ideas in 
our waking lives, and even more intense than that which 
attends the perception of objects in the external world. 
This peculiar intensity of the dream-consciousness is uni- 
versally admitted; it effectually puts out of court the sug- 
gestion that the dream-process is merely a riotous play of 
the objective mind-elements themselves. It is certainly 
not merely the result of concentration of vision, or of the 
blocking out of outside impressions; for not even the enor- 
mous power of concentration of those men who are the 
greatest of thinkers, though they so place themselves as to 
be quite free from the distracting influence of outside im- 
pressions, can endow their visualised ideas in the process of 
objective thought with a tithe of that psychic illumination 
which is the natural accompaniment of the dream-process, 
even in the mind of a child. In other words, the dream- 
process indicates not merely that a part of the mind-sub- 
stance is capable of acting separately from the objective 
mind-organ, but further that this substance is of a consti- 
tution that, when stimulated, it produces a psychic illu- 
mination far more intense than that of which the objective 
mind-elements are capable. 

What is still more remarkable, however, in a dream is 
the form into which the process throws the whole mass of 


MATERIAL DEPOSIT OF GENERIC WAVE 89 

visualised images. They appear not as a chaotic medley, 
but in an orderly arrangement; but this orderly arrange- 
ment is not that in which they actually exist in the outside 
world, and with which the objective mind constantly identi- 
fies them. The arrangement is that of a dramatic represen- 
tation : the sequences of events all tending to a climax in an 
action which may involve the most passionate movement. 
The representation opens with the imagination of some in- 
different scene or event, in which we play our several parts 
in quite an ordinary and matter-of-fact way. Then one or 
more of the great emotions — joy, sorrow, terror, love, hatred, 
jealousy, revenge, horror, as the case may be — suddenly 
colours the whole vision, determines anew the characters 
and the scenes represented — the visualised images used are 
now selected and no longer fortuitous — and hurries the 
movement forward to a climax which is finally reached in 
a whirl of frenzied ecstasy. Thus the slight noise of some- 
thing falling to the ground may give rise, in the mind of a 
sleeper, to a dramatic representation involving many people, 
and covering a long expanse of time, culminating finally in 
a murderous attack with a pistol. Or the dream may origi- 
nate in a cramped position of the muscles, and then, in the 
climax, we may see ourselves attacked and injured by a 
host of enemies; or the cause may be a visceral sensation, 
and then we may see ourselves taking part in the joyous 
festivities of a banquet, which suddenly transmutes itself 
into a drama culminating in the administration of a poison. 
Of course, the whole of the presentation thus coherently 
set forth, is very seldom remembered in its entirety by the 
sleeper when he awakes. The remembrance of a dream 
fades away with extraordinary rapidity; and even in the 
mind of a most attentive observer, the remembrance of a 
dream is apt to resolve itself, within a few seconds of wak- 


go THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

ing up, into the remembrance of one or two of its most 
striking incidents. But there can be no question of the 
fact that in every case the mental process does take a dra- 
matic form, whatever its origin may be. 

But the most remarkable feature of the dream-process, 
after all, is the constant violation of the fundamental 
axioms of that world of thought to which the images, 
which are used to visualise the process, properly belong. 
These images are objective; they are obviously representa- 
tions of existent realities in the outside world; they there- 
fore belong to a mosaic of ideas of which the recognition 
of what we call the laws of Nature is an integral part. 
Every visualised image of a thing, in short, reveals within 
itself the modes of behaviour of which that thing is capable. 
We should therefore expect these visualised images, when- 
ever they are evoked in consciousness, to preserve their ob- 
jective character: to continue to behave, and to influence 
the procession of ideas of which they are the consecutive 
links, in such a way that the whole mental process should 
constitute a true representation of the modes of behaviour 
which are natural to them. And this is what happens 
when we make use of these visualised images to carry out a 
train of thought in the Objective or Modern form of men- 
tation. In this process of reasoning we help ourselves by 
visualising, as far as we can, every consecutive idea ; and it 
is the full retention in this visualised image of all the char- 
acters of the object or the situation with which we are 
dealing, that makes this faculty of visualisation so impor- 
tant an aid in the intellectual operation. But in the dream- 
process, the representation constantly violates, in a most 
flagrant manner, the natural order of things. This may 
not be a marked feature of the first stage of the dream- 
process; but as soon as the emotional motif develops it- 


MATERIAL DEPOSIT OF GENERIC WAVE 91 

self, this repeated triumph of the supernatural over the 
natural becomes the most salient characteristic of the whole 
process. Things occur in the most unaccountable manner; 
and the more intense the emotion, the more stupendous be- 
come the miracles that convulse the natural order of things 
in the procession of events represented. 

Scarcely less remarkable is the extraordinary affection of 
time consciousness in the dream-process. It is a well 
known fact that a dream may only have lasted for the 
smallest possible fraction of a second, and yet it will ap- 
pear to the dreamer as if it had occupied a long period of 
time, running maybe into many years. The noise of an 
object falling to the floor will actually awaken a sleeper 
before it has died away, and yet that noise may have started 
in the mind of the sleeper a dramatic representation involv- 
ing many people and covering a long expanse of time. In 
other words, the time consciousness of the dream-process is 
that of the eternal present. Every stimulation of the 
dream-consciousness, however transient, produces a time con- 
sciousness which is that of eternity. 

In other words, the character of the dream-consciousness 
in ourselves is very much the same as that displayed by the 
higher intelligence in the Archaic form of mentation. The 
existence and reality of this form of mentation is therefore 
proved not merely by what we know of the Archaic 
world, but also by what occurs in ourselves when we com- 
pletely sever the connections between the higher intelli- 
gence and the outside world. If we remember that in our- 
selves the capacity for purely subjective mentation is neces- 
sarily very much diminished — since for the last 3,000 years 
the mind has been becoming more and more objective, as- 
suming characters which are highly antagonistic to the 
play of the subjective functions, whilst all the individuals 


92 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

in whom these functions threatened to persist in their pris- 
tine intensity have gradually been suppressed in the struggle 
for existence — we shall only expect to find in ourselves 
vestigial remains of that capacity. Dreams in us, there- 
fore, have neither the intensity, nor the perfection of out- 
line, nor the truth, of the representation evolved in con- 
sciousness by the subjective intelligence in the Archaic form 
of mentation. But the character of the mental process is 
the same. 

It would be outside the purpose of this chapter 
to describe in further detail the character of the subjective 
phase of consciousness. Enough has been said to suggest 
to the reader the co- relation of the various groups of phe- 
nomena which have been brought before him. They estab- 
lish the fact that the higher intelligence has manifested it- 
self, throughout the ages of the historical progression of 
Mankind, in two distinct phases of consciousness. In the 
later phase, which has become more and more prepon- 
derant during the last 3,000 years, this higher intelligence 
has progressively transformed itself into an instrument of 
objective thought and observation; the mind-elements have 
gradually been brought into direct conscious communica- 
tion with the facts and objects of the external world; and 
the attention of the individual has finally centred itself 
entirely on the natural order of things thus revealed to him. 
The necessary result of this persistent and continuous appli- 
cation of the higher intelligence has been to endow the 
modern mind with so extensive a grasp over the forces and 
materials of Nature — so extensive already, in spite of the 
fact that the transformation from the subjective to the ob- 
jective phase of consciousness is far from complete; there 
being still vast regions of mental experience in us that find 
expression only in subjective form — that the corresponding 


MATERIAL DEPOSIT OF GENERIC WAVE 93 

achievements of the early Egyptians and Babylonians are 
dwarfed by comparison into proportions of grotesque in- 
significance. 

But in the earlier phase of its development, the higher in- 
telligence existed in the individual for a period of nearly 
5,000 years in a state of complete detachment from Nature. 
Its representations in consciousness assumed a dramatic 
form, and clothed themselves in such actions and move- 
ments of animate beings as were most appropriate to repre- 
sent the fluctuations of its own existence. For being thus 
detached from Nature, its representations in consciousness 
were the expression of its own self — its own constitution, 
its own existence, and the conditions that determined this 
existence — and not the existence of any realities in the out- 
side world, of which it was wholly and entirely ignorant. 
Thus operating, it embodied in the pagan religious con- 
sciousness a self-revelation of its own origin; and caused 
the individual to become subservient to the cosmic process 
which had determined that origin. The pagan gods, from 
first to last, were personified expressions of the cosmic proc- 
ess, of the development which it was inducing in the in- 
dividual, and of the obligations which it imposed on him. 


CHAPTER V 


PHYSICAL BASIS OF GENERIC WAVE 

But if what I have said in the last chapter is true, then 
actual examination of the cerebral cortex should reveal 
some indication of the fact that its highest layer of cells 
either is, or was originally, altogether separate from the 
outside world, and barred from contact with it by the layer 
which constituted the pre-existing mind-organ. As a mat- 
ter of fact, the relations of the different layers of the cere- 
bral cortex are exactly those which are postulated by our 
theory. We do not even need the brain of an Ancient 
Egyptian to prove these relations ; they are still clearly evi- 
dent in the brain of the modern individual. On the next 
page is the microscopial appearance of a section through the 
human cerebral cortex. 

The reader will see that in this section it is clearly 
evident that the whole of the grey matter consists 
of two parts which are sharply separated from each other 
by a band which is marked X. The upper part consists 
of two layers again, the cells of which differ from each 
other in some very striking peculiarities. The cells of the 
upper layer are small, comparatively few in number, and 
have no communication at all with the outside world. 
They possess an irregular body giving off four or five 
dendrites which terminate within that same layer, and a 
long nerve fibre process which runs parallel to the surface 
of the convolution; that is to say, none of the processes 
that issue from these cells are continued into the white mat- 
ter to become one of the nerve fibres of that substance, and 

94 


BASIS OF GENERIC WAVE 95 

thus none of these cells are directly connected with the 
senses or with the muscular system, by means of which the 



By permission of Longmans, Green & Co. From Ladd’s Physiological 
Psychology. 

Section through the Cerebral Cortex of Man, prepared with Osmic Acid 
45 /i. Schwalbe. I, principal external, and 11 , internal, layer; x, layer 
lying as a limit between the two; m, medullary substance seeding out 
bundles of nerve-fibres into 11; 1, layer poor in cells, but with an exter- 
nal plexus of nerve-fibres (ia) ; 2, layer of small, and 3, of large, pyra- 
midal cells; 4, inner layer of small nerve- cells. 

relations with the outside world are carried on. The cells 
in the lower division of that upper part are larger and far 


96 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

more numerous than the above. They have begun to 
acquire that pyramidal shape which is characteristic of the 
cells of the layer immediately below them, but they are 
still very small in relation to the latter. These small pyra- 
midal cells have processes, some of which reach up into the 
higher division without touching the cells of that division, 
whilst others proceed downwards towards the white matter 
and run into the nerve fibres of that substance, and they 
are at the same time connected by transverse processes with 
the large pyramidal cells immediately below them. Thus 
the cells of this layer have entered into definite communi- 
cation, not only with the large pyramidal cells below them, 
but directly through the white matter of the brain with the 
senses and the muscular system which govern the objective 
relations of the body. The mass of grey matter which 
lies below the band of division also consists of two layers, 
the upper one of which contains a great number of large 
pyramidal cells, from which processes go upwards to the 
cells of the upper layer and downward to the nerve fibres 
of the white matter of the brain. The lowest layer of this 
second division consists of ganglia of an irregular outline, 
which give out processes extending on the one side only into 
the region of the large pyramidal cells, whilst below the 
neuraxon gives off a number of collaterals, and then be- 
comes a nerve fibre of the central white matter. 

The point of all this is that, as a matter of fact, the 
highest layer of cells in the grey matter of the brain is still 
completely separated from the external world. Below this 
highest layer there are cells which evidently belonged to it, 
but which have recently entered into relation with the out- 
side world. 

Moreover, these higher cells of the cortex are far more 
numerous in proportion to the weight and bulk of the indi- 


BASIS OF GENERIC WAVE 


97 


vidual in early childhood than they are in adult life. They 
do not, in other words, increase in the same ratio with the 
rest of the bodily organisation of the individual; whether 
they increase at all, indeed, is very doubtful. It would 
appear that they are fully formed very early in life, and 
subsequently there is no further increase, even if there is not 
a decrease; at any rate, they do not share in that tremen- 
dous process of growth and development which takes place 
in the rest of the body of the individual. 


These considerations strongly suggest that the cause of the 
different behaviour of the brain cells of the new mind-organ 
in the two phases of human development is the fact that 
when they were first added to the anatomy of the individual 
they did not arise by a process of extension from the cells 
of a pre-existing mind-organ, but were derived by a separate 
origin from a part of the Germ-plasm separate and distinct 
from that which produced the pre-existing organization of 
the individual. Because of this mode of origin, they re- 
mained throughout the whole course of the Archaic period 
separate and distinct from the cells of the pre-existing mind- 
organ. Because of the physiological antagonism which 
necessarily arose between these two distinct sets of mind 
elements, the new layer of cells was barred from direct 
communication with the outside world by the pre-existing 
mind-organ, and it was not until it had reached a state of 
maturity and had completely suppressed the pre-existing 
mind-organ that it could begin to fulfil its functions as a 
centre of objective intelligence. This separate origin and 
separate state of the cells of the new mind-organ affords a 
complete explanation, in terms of the doctrine of the cor- 
relation of mental and nervous processes, of the subjective 


98 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

phase of consciousness, which dominated the progression of 
humanity during the whole of the Archaic period of de- 
velopment. 


We have already seen that the pattern impressed on the 
historical progression of mankind by the development of the 
pagan religious consciousness indicates clearly that the cos- 
mic process which has been in operation during the whole 
of the seven thousand years involved is essentially of the 
same nature as that concerned in the production of each 
Racial movement. Since this larger process is one which 
has fulfilled itself solely through a series of Racial move- 
ments, then, if the latter are due to developments in the 
virginal part of the Germ-plasm, it is clear that the larger 
process — the Generic process, as it may fitly be termed — 
must be equally due solely to an affection of the Germ- 
plasm. But since the development of the new mind-organ 
has already been in operation many thousands of years, it 
follows that the determinant organism in question is of far 
larger magnitude than that involved in a Racial movement; 
and since the successive stages of the development have 
been effected solely through a series of Racial movements, it 
follows that the series of Racial organisms involved in these 
movements must embody within them the existence of the 
determinant Generic Organism. The supreme organism, in 
fact, propagates itself through a series of Racial organisms, 
just as each Racial organism fulfils its existence through 
many generations of individuals. This supreme organism, 
which controls the development of a whole genus of living 
creatures, is therefore the single determinant of the whole 
evolutionary process concerned in the creation of the new 
mind-organ; and the successive Racial growths, through 


BASIS OF GENERIC WAVE 


99 


which it fulfils its development, are merely successive un- 
foldings of its energies. It is absolutely necessary that the 
reader should grasp this relation of the successive Racial 
growths to the single Generic Organism, which is at the 
same time fulfilling its existence in the eternal current of the 
Germ-plasma. We may put it in this way, that the act 
of fertilisation which creates the Generic Organism trans- 
forms the virginal plasma to such a degree that it grows 
enormously in bulk, and is ready to undergo the next stage 
of division into cellular elements, but cannot do so until it 
receives a second specific stimulation; and this second spe- 
cific stimulation is the act of fertilisation which transforms 
part of the Generic substance into a Racial organism. The 
one stimulus starts the development of the Generic Organ- 
ism, the substance of which, however, remains inert and 
incapable of taking part in the bodily development of the 
individual; the other stimulus starts a secondary form of 
development in a portion of the Generic substance, which 
then takes the form of a Racial organism, and in this state 
is capable of taking part in the bodily development of the 
individual. A process analogous to the one herein postu- 
lated is familiar to biologists in the reproduction of cer- 
tain protozoa; where, following the stimulus which is to 
produce the phenomenon, the parent cell increases enor- 
mously in bulk, and subsequently discharges from its sub- 
stance successive groups of fresh unicellular elements. 
The Racial organism is therefore part of the Generic sub- 
stance, which has received the additional stimulus neces- 
sary to enable it to undergo cellular division; and in this 
latter condition it is drawn by the somatic portion of the 
structural plasma into the bodily development of the indi- 
vidual. The real development that takes place in each Ra- 
cial movement, therefore, is the development of the Generic 



BASIS OF GENERIC WAVE 


IOI 


has brought us to the present state of things in the condi- 
tion of humanity. It has endowed this great mass of hu- 
man beings with the substance of a new mind-organ, which, 
in the earlier phase of its development, gave rise to the 
pagan religious consciousness. This religious consciousness, 
with the beliefs it created, the mental attitudes it induced, 
and the obligations it imposed, has been directly caused by 
the Generic Organism. The historical development of 
pagan religions is, in short, the expression in consciousness 
of the development of the Generic Organism. And the 
obligations thus imposed on all these masses of human be- 
ings through the pagan religious consciousness spring di- 
rectly from the necessities of its own existence. For it is 
of the very essence of the theory that the supreme universal 
agent therein defined is of the nature of a living organism, 
acting always, like all other living organisms, blindly for 
the maintenance and fulfilment of its own existence. 

At this point we may fitly take note of those conclusions 
which have been in part long established through philo- 
logical evidence, and in other parts strongly suggested by 
recent archaeological research, concerning the essential unity 
of that great growth of humanity in which the development 
of the religious idea, or the historical progression of Man- 
kind, has taken place. It has long been known that the 
Aryan inhabitants of India and the European nations in 
whom the later phases of the development have taken place, 
have sprung from the same stock, which must have origi- 
nated somewhere in Central Asia and spread itself over the 
wide area indicated in successive waves. But it is becom- 
ing every day clearer that the Races that quickened into 
life the earliest religious consciousness of the Egyptians 
and Babylonians also came from this same region of su- 
preme developmentary activity. From this centre spread 


i02 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


a succession of Races, and these Races have in their turn 
given birth to new Racial movements; and in this great 
growth of human beings, coming all from one single stock, 
the historical development of humanity has taken place. 
The early part of this development has been permanently 
signalised for us mostly in the records of Egypt and Babylo- 
nia, because the sections of humanity inhabiting these 
countries possessed the material knowledge requisite for 
making these records and rendering them capable of 
weathering the hazards of the ages in a far higher degree 
than the aborigines of Europe. The new Races themselves 
did not create any such knowledge, but they readily availed 
themselves of the knowledge already possessed by those 
peoples with whom they mingled in their migrations; and 
thus it happens that, although the movement of the new 
Genus swept over a much wider area, it is only the regions 
lying south of the centre of origin that yield to us clear 
evidence of the successive stages of the first half of its de- 
velopment. For the same reason, — because of their more 
advanced state in culture and in civilisation — the peoples of 
the South were less severely affected by the advancing tide 
of the new Genus ; they absorbed it in part and surrendered 
themselves to its encroachments only by instalments* and 
they impressed on the Races of the new Genus that sprung 
from them a character which was the result of inheritance 
of pre-existing conditions; thus giving rise to that Semitic 
variation in temperament and outlook which impresses one 
at first sight with the idea that two different stocks have 
taken part in the higher evolution of humanity. The de- 
velopment of the religious idea, however, reveals itself 
continuously and indifferently in both the Aryan and Semi- 
tic peoples; it is the same whether we trace it in the old 
Sanscrit literature, or in the records of Babylonia and 


BASIS OF GENERIC WAVE 


103 


Egypt; the only difference is that in the former its mysti- 
cal side is more accentuated, and it is freer to rise into the 
heights of transcendental feeling because the earlier phases 
are less permanently marked — whereas, in the latter, the 
presentation is more material, and the earlier phases main- 
tain throughout a preponderant influence, because they 
were recorded in characters so indelible that they survived 
and influenced the development of many successive Racial 
movements. This is so in general; yet the freest, most 
spiritual, and most perfect presentment of the religious idea 
expressed itself in the Hebrews, who were a Semitic people. 
From our point of view, of course, the development of pa- 
gan religions signalises the life of the Generic Organism; 
both Semites and Aryans should, from this point of view, 
belong to the same stock or have been integrally affected by 
the same stock; and the probability that the religious move- 
ments in Egypt and Babylonia were actually started by mi- 
grations from the same regions that were the common origin 
of the Indo-European Races, is a material contribution to 
the validity of our assumption. 

I will presently prove the theory in detail by show- 
ing that each separate stage of the religious and historical 
development of humanity has been the result of the condi- 
tions which it postulates. In this chapter, I will only 
show how the general religious consciousness would neces- 
sarily arise as the result of the physiological situation postu- 
lated in the theory. 

If we consider for a moment the conditions that deter- 
mine and modify consciousness, it will be easy to see that 
the addition of a new layer of cerebral ganglia to a pre- 
existing mind-organ, as postulated above, would establish 
just such physiological conditions as would necessarily give 


104 THE significance of ancient religions 

rise in consciousness to the mental phenomena that consti- 
tute the basis of all ancient religions. 

It is universally recognised that the fundamental and 
earliest element in all these ancient religions is the animis- 
tic conception of natural objects; in other words, the per- 
ception, either in fact or in feeling, of a supernatural pres- 
ence in every natural object. The Sanskrit name of these 
earliest presentations of the religious consciousness — devah 
— reveals to us the characteristic that primarily distin- 
guished these presentations from all others. The root 
meaning of the term “devah” signifies the “brilliant” or 
“shining” ones. This agrees with what has already been 
said concerning the peculiar brilliancy of the psychic illu- 
mination which accompanies the subjective presentations 
of the dream-process; and in the illustration made use of in 
a preceding chapter, the bush is described as revealing itself 
to Moses as a bush that was on fire, and yet did not burn 
away. In other words, the men in whom these presenta- 
tions first occurred recognised them by reason of the in- 
tense illumination of consciousness with which they were 
associated. This being so, the task that lies before us is 
to show that the physiological conditions brought about 
by the growth of a new mind-organ would be such, in its 
earliest stages, as to produce in consciousness, whenever the 
perception of an object arose in it, the subsequent intensity 
of psychic illumination that was the distinguishing charac- 
teristic of these presentations. And if it can be shown that, 
because of the same physiological conditions, this flash of 
illumination in the higher intelligence would at once sup- 
press the psychical activity of the pre-existing mind-organ, 
so that it could receive no further impressions from the out- 
side world — thus bringing about the situation which is 
determinative of the Subjective form of mentation — then it 


BASIS OF GENERIC WAVE 


105 


will be clear that we have discovered the physical basis of 
the expression of the Religious Idea in consciousness. 

We know from our daily experience that it is only those 
mental acts to which we are not habituated that are at- 
tended by a vivid illumination of consciousness. The more 
we are trained by constant exercise in any mental process, 
the more does that mental process tend to occur without 
awakening in us any keen perception or realisation of what 
we are doing. In all modes of action, it is only when we 
are learning to do a thing that we are acutely sensitive to 
every step. When we have once thoroughly learned to do 
it, the action tends to become a mechanical one, and is often 
performed quite unconsciously. In all the various forms of 
thinking there is considerable psychic illumination, because 
the very fact of thinking about anything implies a certain 
lack of familiarity with the matter in hand; but the elabora- 
tion of original lines of thought, of whatever kind they may 
be, produces the most intense realisation of existence. Most 
things that we are sufficiently trained in to do without 
thinking, are done absent-mindedly; and even a sensation 
oft repeated soon loses all vividness in consciousness. 

Vividness of consciousness, in fact, depends to a certain 
extent on the strength of the stimulus applied to the mind- 
organ; but it depends far more on the virgin condition of 
the mind-elements. Connections between ideational centres 
are set up by nervous discharges which channel through the 
sensitive matrix in which the ganglia are embedded. In 
the early part of this operation, before the communications 
are definitely established, the passage of the nervous dis- 
charge meets necessarily with a certain amount of resistance. 
In overcoming this, it sets up a wave of vibratory disturb- 
ance, which is transmitted in all directions by the sensi- 
tive matrix. This vibratory disturbance necessarily stimu- 


io6 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


lates to a greater or lesser extent all the other ganglia 
embedded in the area affected, although these had no part 
in the original mental process; and, of course, the greater 
the psychic excitement, the greater is the resulting realisa- 
tion of existence which is super-added to the state of atten- 
tion evoked by the original mental process. Groups of 
ganglia which have been thus excited, become themselves 
fresh centres of conscious disturbance, and claim attention; 
whole trains of thought may be set in motion; memories 
awaken; dramatic situations become faintly outlined in con- 
sciousness; and in response to these movements in the 
higher ganglia, the lower nervous centres of the whole body 
evoke from the muscular and visceral systems their accus- 
tomed sensations. Hence the intense realisation of exist- 
ence, in all its possible attributes, which is the distinctive 
feature of what we call “human consciousness.” The mind 
becomes flooded with a radiance and vastness of feeling, 
which embodies itself as director and observer behind the 
particular mental process which happens to be predominant 
at the time, and appears to be quite independent of the 
stimulation which originated the latter. 

But when the same mental process has repeated itself 
very often, and the communications between the ideational 
centres have become thoroughly channelled through, the 
nervous discharge then flows easily from one to the other, 
causing little or no vibratory disturbance in the substance 
of the matrix. The intensity as well as the range of con- 
sciousness becomes then proportionately less, until, it nar- 
rows itself to a mere realisation of the mental process that 
is taking place, and of such effects as it may produce 
through the association of ideas ; and even this, in the press 
of other ideas, may fail to attract any notice. 

In short, the more the mind-organ becomes converted 


BASIS OF GENERIC WAVE 


107 


into a highly-trained objective mechanism, the less vivid 
does self-consciousness become. Bearing these things in 
mind, let us consider what would happen as the result of the 
appearance in these individuals of a new layer of cerebral 
ganglia. 

It is plain that the first consequence of such an event 
would be to establish such physiological conditions as would 
render the perception of objects liable to be followed by a 
sudden after-glow of consciousness, exceeding in brilliancy 
any psychic illumination to which they were accustomed. 
The new elements would be separated from sensuous con- 
nection with the external world by the substance of the 
older mind-organ, and they could therefore be stimulated 
into psychical activity only indirectly, through stimulation 
of this mind-organ. When an object in the outside world 
gave rise to an idea in the older mind-organ, the vibratory 
disturbance resulting from the impression, radiating feebly 
through the no longer sensitive tissues adjacent, would reach 
the nearest cell of the new area. Although the stimulus 
applied to this cell would necessarily be very faint, yet. 
because of its virginal state, and the virginal state of the 
surrounding tissue, its excitation would give rise to a sud- 
den glow of psychic illumination, of a very intense and 
dazzling character. 

But beyond this, the stimulation of the new elements 
into psychical activity of such intensity would necessarily 
withdraw, for so long as this activity lasted, the available 
nourishment necessary for the maintenance of the psycho- 
physiological activity of the pre-existing mind-organ, in 
order that the new area of more intense combustion should 
be adequately supplied. We know that of all kinds of 
physiological work there is none that is so exhausting to the 
cells concerned as that which is attended with consciousness. 


io8 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


It is a matter of general experience that the acts that we 
do automatically, with scarcely any consciousness of them, 
fatigue us very little; whereas those attended with a bril- 
liant illumination of consciousness are very exhausting. 
Thus psycho-physiological action, whatever its exact nature 
may be, is very much more exhausting, and requires for its 
maintenance much more delicate and complete arrange- 
ments for the nutrition of the cell, than action that is 
merely physiological. Hence we can readily understand 
that the psychical life of the cortical ganglionic cells is very 
delicately balanced on their nutrition, and that it is very 
much more easily upset by any disturbance of that nutri- 
tion than the merely physiological life of any cell can be. 
But, as we have said, the psychical activity of the new ele- 
ments would be immensely greater, by reason of their vir- 
ginal nature, than that of the pre-existing mind-organ. It 
is easy enough, therefore, to understand that the result of 
their being stimulated into psychical activity would be to 
immediately drain away so much of the available nourish- 
ment from the elements of the pre-existing mind-organ, that 
the latter should at once become psychically inert. The in- 
dividual would feel himself suddenly bereft of his faculties, 
and incapable both of thought and of action ; whilst in the 
same flash of psychic illumination that overwhelmed his 
mind, he visualised for an instant — just as we visualise 
figures in a dream — the cause of his distress in the form of 
an animate being. 

Thus the physiological conditions would establish a 
natural and never-ending antagonism between the two sets 
of mind-elements. If the activity and energy of the pre- 
existing mind-organ remained so great that this drawing 
away of nourishment for the benefit of the new elements 
could not take place, then this would necessarily prevent 


BASIS OF GENERIC WAVE 


109 


the psychic activity of the new ganglia. And at the very 
beginning of the process, the new development would only 
be strong enough to inhibit and disorganise the objective 
habit of thought, so that it tended to induce in the indi- 
vidual a miserable state of confusion, stupor, and depres- 
sion, deepening into terror at every recurrent manifestation 
of the malignant supernatural being. 

But as, in course of time, the new development became 
more powerful, and a greater part of its substance became 
psychically active at each moment of stimulation, and the 
resistance of the pre-existing mind-organ became less, it 
necessarily began to give rise, through the vigour of its own 
psychical illumination, to ecstatic states of self-conscious- 
ness which offered to the individual the possibility of a bliss 
so intense that the pale joys of his former condition be- 
came as nothing by comparison. It revealed to him a para- 
dise resplendent with the presence of a radiant and eternal 
spirit, whose breath was the breath of a life gorgeous and 
sublime above the possibilities of those sensuous perceptions 
that formed the substance of his natural existence. In 
this paradise of consciousness, the troubles attendant on the 
disorganisation of his faculties and of the material condi- 
tions of his existence, vanished into innocuous phantasms, 
which could not seriously affect him. There was lit up in 
him a sense of unlimitable well-being, which was entirely 
independent of all external conditions, and yet was capable 
of heightening into an ecstasy the enjoyment of every ma- 
terial pleasure. Realisation of Self-existence is of the very 
essence of happiness; no man can give a greater expression 
of happiness than when he says “I feel that I am living!” 
But the enjoyment of life was not merely more intense; it 
had in it, besides, the promise of eternity. For whilst his 
sensuous perceptions were of comparatively short duration, 


IIO THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

being fractions of the consciousness of a mind-organ wound 
up, so to say, in unison with the physiological life of the 
body : the ecstatic moods which now appeared in him would 
be instinct with the sense of eternity which is characteristic 
of the Subjective phase of consciousness. Moreover, in 
these ecstatic moods he found that springs of energy mani- 
fested themselves, that enabled him to perform wonders in 
the attainment of any object towards which he had an 
inclination. Each individual could unlock the gates of this 
paradise and enter therein on certain conditions. Is it at 
all astonishing that he did his utmost to secure a free pass 
into this paradise? What was the value of his objective 
existence — an objective existence that in course of time be- 
came more and more full of difficulties, more disorganised 
and more chaotic — in comparison with the joys and powers 
that offered themselves to him? These joys and powers 
were his on certain conditions ; he had to suppress in himself 
the habit of thought, and the activities that exercised the 
pre-existing mind-organ and sustained its capacity for 
blocking the subjective form of mentation: he had to wor- 
ship with concentrated attention the presentations in con- 
sciousness which the subjective form of mentation evoked 
in him, and he had to surrender himself to the ecstatic im- 
pulsions which these presentations induced in him. But the 
alternative was a terrible one. For if he refused thus to 
behave, he did not thereby obliterate the new mind-ele- 
ments; he only obstructed their activity so far as to pre- 
vent them from giving rise to the higher manifestations of 
which they were capable. They went on operating, but 
only to the point of revealing to him in every object and 
every situation in the outside world the presence of a ma- 
lignant demon, whose particular business it was to wreak 
on him the vengeance of the insulted gods. If he refused 


BASIS OF GENERIC WAVE 


hi 


to enter heaven, then he fell straightway into hell. Thus, 
for any individual with common sense, there was really no 
alternative; and the observance of these conditions neces- 
sarily became for him the most important function of life. 

The reader must clearly grasp the objective reality of the 
above presentation. It is no mystical or metaphysical con- 
ception that we are dealing with, but one based on the well- 
known material properties of the higher nerve-centres. 
This presentation at once places on a reasonable and scien- 
tific basis the origin of religion and of the Divine hegemony 
of humanity, which resulted in that strange subordination of 
the individual to a higher law than that of his own ex- 
istence. It shows that the motives which led to the recogni- 
tion of this hegemony in man were of a very ordinary and 
even commonplace character; they were not in themselves, 
in the slightest degree, supernatural. It also shows that 
the origin of that state of mind which created the intense 
religious consciousness of the Archaic world was the neces- 
sary consequence of the physiological conditions attending 
the development of a new mind-organ, in the manner pos- 
tulated in my theory. 













BOOK II 

THE RISE OF THE WAVE 


v 





















CHAPTER I 


RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF SAVAGES 

According to our theory, the process of religious ideation 
in humanity forms a continuous development from a point 
of origin standing in such definite relationship to the his- 
torical progression of events in the Archaic period as to be 
capable of causing them. But rudimentary religious con- 
ceptions are widely prevalent, if not universal, throughout 
the savage world of to-day ; and before proceeding any fur- 
ther, I will show in this chapter that what has happened 
in the savage world as the consequence of the historical 
progression of humanity is quite sufficient to harmonise the 
fact of this wide dispersion of religious ideas with the con- 
ditions postulated in my theory. 

What I wish to point out is that the original savage races 
have been so continuously and vitally affected by contact 
with those of higher origin during the 6,000 years or more 
that the latter have been in existence, that we shall probably 
not err in saying that there is not a single savage people 
existing at the present day which is perfectly free from the 
necessary results of such contact. This continued and ever 
freshened contact, and its necessary results, are features of 
such vast importance in the history of Mankind, and have 
been so inadequately appreciated by anthropologists in gen- 
eral, that it will be worth our while to consider them some- 
what fully. It will be impossible for us to keep the phe- 
nomena relating to the savage world in their right perspec- 
tive, if we have not, and do not constantly bear in mind, a 
very clear idea of what has taken place in the savage world 
as the result of the growth of the historical Races. 


1 16 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

We see at the present day how from a thousand different 
points of contact the civilised world is affecting the savage 
world. In every direction the Protestant Race, represented 
mainly by the English-speaking nations, but including also 
the French and the German, has spread out, settling itself 
firmly in every spot where the disintegration of pre-existing 
human societies allows it to form distant bases for further 
expansion. And we are all of us familiar with the results 
of this expansion — the wide distribution as dominant fac- 
tors in the government of the world of our own ideals and 
our own modes of behaviour, and the ruthless extermination 
of great masses of savages. 

The effects of the expansive energy of this one single 
Race are enormous. Whole continents have been depopu- 
lated and repeopled. Scarcely is there a savage people that 
has not had its social structure more or less shattered and 
disorganised. And this movement started only 400 years 
ago. Before the Reformation none of the nations con- 
cerned in this modern invasion of the world had a single 
colony, or manifested the slightest desire to engage in the 
expansive process. 

It is not where the Spaniard and Portuguese toiled in 
the Middle Ages that the results obtained are most strik- 
ing. Nor, wherever the two movements have mingled, 
have the two coalesced into one; so that nowhere could this 
modern invasion be correctly described as a continuation or 
a later development of that in which the Southern nations 
of Europe were the leaders. The modern invasion of the 
world, with its astounding results, is the work of only one 
single Race during the short lapse of 400 years. 

But this modern invasion is not a unique phenomenon in 
history. We know that the Race immediately preceding 
ours in time manifested exactly the same expansive energy. 


RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF SAVAGES 117 

During the Middle Ages and right up to the Reformation, 
the Venetians, Genoese, Portuguese, and Spaniards dis- 
played the same restless energy, planted their colonies on 
every shore* and carried with them the same destructive in- 
fluences. Most of these colonies have since disappeared, 
but still enough of them remains to enable us to form some 
idea of the enormous extent of the operations of this Race. 
Not less intense was the expansive energy of the Moham- 
medans, who spread on one side through the whole breadth 
of Asia into the islands of the Pacific, and on the other into 
the innermost recesses of Africa to the further Atlantic, 
whilst their fleets sailed far and wide, and left settlements 
on many a shore which now reveal not a trace of their for- 
mer presence. We know how restless was the expansive 
energy of the Romans; and the Greeks had founded a 
world of colonies even long before the Macedonian con- 
quests laid bare to them the heart of Asia, and made them 
masters of the Nile. 

These are facts that no one will dispute. This tendency 
to expansion is a rhythmically recurring phenomenon in his- 
tory. It is an attribute of the growing stage of every Race 
of living creatures. It would therefore be an attribute of 
the growing stage of every one of the older or Archaic 
Races, as well as of the Modern Races of whom we pos- 
sess exact historical knowledge. This tendency to expan- 
sion has urged every one of these Races to spread away 
from its centre of origin and to carry with it far and wide 
the scourge and the blessing of its productive vigour. It 
has urged them in this direction in spite of every obstacle 
that the environment could offer to locomotion. Neither 
the matted depths of primeval forests, nor the torrid heat 
of waterless deserts, nor the boundless expanse of billowy 
oceans, has availed to strangle this overwhelming instinct; 


n8 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


though each and every one of these difficulties may have 
contributed to shorten the possible range of movement. 
The ancients could not in the same space of time reach as 
far as we can with our railways, our steamships, and our 
offensive weapons. But they were governed by mind in its 
subjective phase of consciousness, and their great under- 
takings were the result of inspirational guidance of such 
intensity that it raised them above their difficulties, and 
made them independent of railways and steamships, and 
careless of the practical utility and feasibility of their di- 
rected movements. The Israelites were not the only ones 
amongst the ancients to set out on their wanderings wrapped 
up in a spirit that disdained to consider the objective side 
of their undertaking — to set out without even knowing defi- 
nitely whither they were going, how long they were going 
for, by what routes they were going, how they were to be 
nourished, what obstacles they had to encounter, and how 
they were to overcome them. This spirit belonged to every 
one of the historical races of antiquity, and its effects are 
illustrated in countless instances of similar undertakings, 
of which we have legendary accounts. We need not trou- 
ble ourselves to consider whether these legendary accounts 
are accurately descriptive of the particular events which 
they proclaim. What we can say with tolerable certainty 
is that these accounts do afford us a considerable insight 
into the modes of behaviour and of feeling which were 
familiar to the men of those days, else these accounts would 
never have been constructed and transmitted. Visionary 
undertakings of the greatest magnitude were evidently mat- 
ters of common occurrence, and the mental phenomena of 
the Archaic form of consciousness were such as to render 
them not merely possible, but as productive of good results 
in affording a vent for the expansive energy of the Race, 


RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF SAVAGES 


119 

as are the calculated movements of the present day, di- 
rected solely to definite and useful objects. Inspired by 
that guidance which came to him from within, not directly 
connected with anything outside his own being, the indi- 
vidual became possessed of a mission which raised him dur- 
ing its execution into a world altogether supersensuous, 
wherein neither time, space, nor resistance could avail aught 
against his ecstasy. Difficult as it may be for us to realise 
the possibility of wide wanderings over sea as well as over 
land, without the appliances which make such things possi- 
ble to us, we can yet learn from observation of the Pacific 
Islanders at the present day that it is not impossible to 
navigate the widest stretches of the trackless ocean without 
them. Realise this possibility, and then realise also the 
Archaic temperament in those days when the developmental 
energy of each Race manifested itself in ecstatic impul- 
sions of all sorts, and it will not fail to become evident 
that the expansive energy of each Archaic Race has been 
not less an efficient factor in the destruction of the savage 
world than that of any one of the Modern. Not only did 
these Archaic Races thoroughly impenetrate the conti- 
nents of Asia, Europe, and Africa, long before the com- 
mencement of the Modern Era, but it is also probable that 
they reached and affected far distant continents, like 
America. And if they could not reach so far in, at any 
rate, as great numbers and in the same space of time as we 
can, we must yet remember that they had not so far to go 
to reach the pure aboriginal. The Archaic Races grew up 
surrounded by the latter. They could scarcely wander in 
the slightest degree without coming at once into contact 
with him. 

Moreover, the destructive tendencies in the Archaic Races 
were very much more pronounced than they have been in 


120 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

the Modem. In the latter these tendencies have been 
gradually getting weaker and weaker. We destroy, but 
only so far as we cannot help ourselves; our feelings, our 
ideals, and the very laws that govern us are now all op- 
posed to any wilful or open destruction of the kind. But 
in the Archaic Races they became stronger and stronger. 
Probably weak in the Early Egyptians, in the later Races 
they formed a predominant feature in the character of the 
individual. The capacity for destructiveness in even the 
average lethargic Oriental of the present day, and his per- 
fect freedom from all the feelings that militate against it, 
is appalling to the modern mind when it reveals itself un- 
controlled. Conceive then what its effects must have been 
when these Races were in the full vigour of growth, when 
it was spurred on unceasingly by the highest religious im- 
pulses, when he was accounted greatest and noblest whose 
sword had slain the greatest number of the enemies of his 
god ! Hence, with all the groups of individuals who 
branched off the main growths of these Archaic Races and 
embedded themselves in the softened textures of the sav- 
age world, would be carried a masked spirit of ruthless 
destructiveness of such intensity that, but for the far 
greater ease with which we destroy at the present day, it 
would have produced even greater results than those which 
have attended the expansion of the Modern Races. 

But the destructive effect of the growth of the higher 
Races on the savage world and all its institutions does not 
end with this open and undisguised hostility. There is 
another means by which the same process has been carried 
on which, though less evident at first sight, has served to 
intensify the results obtained a thousandfold, to distribute 
them over an almost limitless area, and to make them felt 
in regions to all seeming purely barbarous, long before the 


RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF SAVAGES 121 

main bodies of the civilised Races have reached them. 
This insidious but far-reaching influence is the effect of the 
transfusion of blood from the higher into the lower Races, 
which takes place, and has taken place throughout the ages, 
whenever the two have come into contact, even for very 
short periods. The male in all the higher Races has been 
a polygamous creature; hence, from the earliest predomi- 
nance of these Races, it has come to pass that aboriginal 
females have had to subserve the function of concubinage. 
Common intermarriage between the higher and lower Races 
is an exceptional event, if it ever has occurred to any great 
extent; for the former have always prohibited the mating 
of their females with savages. But the transfusion of 
blood from the higher to the lower Races through the mat- 
ing of the males of the former with the females of the lat- 
ter has been a constant accompaniment of the gradual spread 
of the former over the face of the earth. 

The polygamous impulse occurs amongst the Modern 
Races as an instinct which many influences, both religious 
and social, tend to repress. Nevertheless, its effects are 
so marked even to the present day that all the masses of 
savages touched by the latest Racial movement — wherever 
they have not been completely exterminated — have been, or 
are rapidly being, bastardised. 

But in the Archaic Races the polygamous, just like the 
purely destructive, impulse was not merely unrepressed 
but actually spurred on by the highest influences, both re- 
ligious and social, that dominated the individual. Amongst 
these Races, to have the largest number of concubines, and 
to produce the largest number of offspring, was one of the 
highest possible claims that the male might have to public 
esteem. No moral considerations hindered a man from at- 
tempting to mate with as many females as circumstances 


122 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


allowed him to do. On the contrary, he was enjoined to 
battle for the satisfaction of this impulse by the highest 
divine ordinances, which allowed his conscience no rest if 
he proved a recreant to this duty. The Harem system and 
the proprietary rights which each man possessed over the 
women in his household placed certain limits to the possible 
effects of this erotic obsession, necessary to the solidarity 
of a state, within the civilised societies themselves. In 
other directions, even within the civilised societies, this 
obsession was encouraged, and the divine character of the 
obligations which it laid upon the individual was em- 
phasised, by the enrolment into religious bodies of women 
whose natures inclined them to lead what we should con- 
sider immoral lives. Outside the limits of the civilised 
societies, even the limits placed upon this obsession by the 
Harem system and the proprietary rights of the male be- 
came inoperative, and the Archaic individual delivered him- 
self up to the performance of his duties with an unsparing 
devotion that found ample scope for its exercise in the 
softened textures of the savage world. 

It is evident, therefore, that the polygamous impulse in 
the Archaic would be productive of even greater results 
than the same impulse in the Modern Races, were it not 
for the greater ease with which the latter have been able 
to distribute themselves over the face of the earth. 

This transfusion of blood from the higher into the lower 
Races occurs, as we have already said, almost entirely 
through the mating of the male of the former with the 
female of the latter. This point is of the highest impor- 
tance. The special features of a transfusion of blood oc- 
curring in this way are that a large number of males come 
into existence who are savages in whatever they inherit 
from the maternal side, but who have all the intellectual 


RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF SAVAGES 


123 


power belonging to the civilised Race, and who, so far as 
their power of development is concerned, behave exactly 
as the males of the civilised Race to which their fathers be- 
longed. When we have obtained a definite idea of the re- 
lations of the two sexes in the evolutionary process, this 
fact will acquire a significance which cannot be adequately 
emphasised at the present moment. But it will be of use 
to remind the reader of the known fact that the essential 
male qualities tend to become transmitted along the male 
line, and the female along the female line. In other words, 
each sex tends to reproduce itself. 

A little reflection will suffice to show that this inheritance 
from the maternal side, investing the bastard breeds with 
much of the appearance and many of the attributes of the 
savage, and freeing them from many of the instincts which 
make the savage loathsome to the civilised being and 
thereby hinder intercourse between them, would actually 
serve as a vehicle for the easier intrusion of the blood of 
the higher Races into the lower. The half-breed would 
meet much less organised resistance to his destructive pro- 
pensities from the savage society, and would obtain far 
readier access to its females. The bastard progeny, multi- 
plying a thousandfold by virtue of its greater fitness for 
the struggle for existence, would gradually destroy all that 
resisted its own predominance in the savage society, would 
displace entirely the male savage, whilst the original nature 
of the female savage would be considerably modified, es- 
pecially if that original nature offered any resistance to 
the predominance of the new element. But in this progeny 
the characteristics of the savage would tend to recur with 
increasing force and frequency through recurrent additions 
of savage maternal inheritance, with consequent gradual 
weakening of the characteristics inherited from the higher 


124 THE significance of ancient religions 

Races. Consequently in this progeny the developmental 
energy of the higher Race-organism would wither away in 
ceaseless conflicts with the elements opposed to it, so that 
it would become proportionately incapable of attaining to 
the highest level of growth. Its power of forming a new 
and specific social structure, of welding together hetero- 
geneous masses of individuals into coherent nations, and 
of creating new embodiments of wisdom would, pro tanto , 
be impaired. In cases where the original transfusion of 
blood was small, no such phenomena of new production 
would occur at all. The predatory and dominant quali- 
ties alone of the higher Race might become intensified, or 
at least continue in their original force, owing to their con- 
stant successful exercise against the weaker aboriginal. The 
bastard progeny would carry with them as individuals the 
modes of behaviour already established in the higher Race 
at the time of the original transfusion of blood, and would 
assert them to the great detriment of the original social 
structure of the savage society, but it would produce noth- 
ing new; nor, except where the special conditions necessary 
for the production of a new Race-organism were present, 
would it start any new process of evolutionary development. 
It would dissolve the bonds that held together the savage 
nations and bound them to specific centres of habitation; 
it would cause them, instead of being fixed in certain spots 
— as is the nature of organised societies after the Racial 
life is extinct — to adopt more or less pronounced nomadic 
habits, giving rise to the liquid aspect of the savage world, 
wherein tribal masses of individuals are continually form- 
ing and re-forming, moving along the lines of least re- 
sistance, and encroaching upon and devouring each other, 
in obedience to impulses which appear to have in them no 
creative or evolutionary quality. But this liquid character 


RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF SAVAGES 


125 


of savage life would give to the emanations from the higher 
Races embedded in it the very best chance of a still wider 
propagation than would otherwise occur. Long after the 
expansive energy of the higher Race itself had come to an 
end, and the civilised society had become petrified around 
its centre of origin, would these degenerating streams of 
its destructive energy continue to percolate through the 
riven structures of the savage world. 

In short, the expansive energy of each Racial organism 
generates a movement that sweeps over the world like a 
hurricane. And the growth of the historical Races has gen- 
erated, not one single movement of the kind, but a long 
series of super-imposed movements of distinct origin and 
propulsive energy, each extending further and in different 
directions from the preceding one, and everywhere ruth- 
lessly destroying the world of the savage, and sowing the 
seed of the higher Genus. 

It follows from this that the state of the savage world at 
the present day is far from being truly representative of 
the human society that existed before the appearance of 
the historical Races. That society constitutes undoubtedly 
an anterior event in our own evolution. But the bonds of 
that society have been riven asunder, its institutions have 
been abolished, its monuments have been levelled to the 
ground, its mechanical appliances have been lost, its mem- 
bers have been subjected to a continuous process of extermi- 
nation which they have been powerless to resist, and only 
the weakly amongst them have been spared; whilst all the 
symbols, objects, and appliances in the outer world which 
corresponded with the mosaic of ideas constituting the 
original mental state of that period, have either entirely 
disappeared or have passed into the sole possession of the 
historical Races. All else that exists in the savage world 


126 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


of to-day is but a wastrel issue from the civilised Races, con- 
stantly degenerating from its origin. The picture that it 
presents us with is a picture of wreckage, derived as much 
indeed from the historical Races as from the human society 
that preceded them. It gives us indications concerning the 
evolutionary process in pre-historic times, but is not itself 
the basis on which has reared itself the historical develop- 
ment of humanity. 

Now the development of the religious idea in the 
Archaic Races is a historic fact. It is, indeed, the supreme 
fact in the history of these Races. It is this development 
that gives to each Race its own peculiar mark; and the 
varying aspects of each successive Racial movement are 
none other than the successive expressions of the religious 
idea in Humanity as it passes continuously from its low- 
est to its highest form. In other words, this development 
propagated itself through the Archaic Racial movements, 
and was the main thing which they in their historical pro- 
cession established in the world of humanity. And the 
sequences of events described in this chapter, which do not 
admit of the slightest doubt, most adequately account for 
the origin of religious conceptions throughout the whole of 
the savage world. The new historical Races must have 
carried with them in their wanderings the religious concep- 
tions which we know were developing in them. That these 
conceptions should have degenerated in the world of the 
savage into the lowest form that they were capable of as- 
suming, and that they should finally become resolved into 
mere agglomerations of terrifying superstitions, which have 
poisoned every sensation until the mind of the savage has 
become a terror-stricken prey to an all-pervading belief in 
witchcraft, is what, in these circumstances, we should nat- 
urally expect. 


RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF SAVAGES 


127 


To sum up: although the religious conceptions so widely 
prevalent amongst savages are of a very low and rudimen- 
tary order, yet in their present setting they do not afford 
us the true perspective of the conditions in the midst of 
which the religious consciousness originated. That per- 
spective is to be found only in the study of the historical 
Races of the Archaic period. From this point of view, the 
process of religious ideation is clearly seen to be a contin- 
uous and organic development from a point of origin stand- 
ing in definite relationship to the progression of events in 
the Archaic period. It is from this definite point of origin 
that have been dispersed in the course of time all the re- 
ligious ideas that we now meet with amongst savages. 


CHAPTER II 


SIGNIFICANCE OF SEX IN EVOLUTION 

But whilst so much of the customs presented to us by the 
savage world are purely a wastrel issue from the historic 
Races, there are some of which this cannot be said. In 
particular is this true of certain customs relating to the po- 
sition of women. These Matriarchal customs, as they are 
usually called, cannot possibly have originated as a conse- 
quence of the development of the historic Races, or as a 
result of the contact of these Races with the savage world. 
They are therefore true relics of the state of human society 
which existed and was probably universally prevalent be- 
fore the development of our own Genus commenced. They 
reveal a relation of the sexes in this primeval state of so- 
ciety which has long been one of the insoluble problems of 
anthropology. But in the light of our theory, this rela- 
tion is quite easy to understand, and it leads us to certain 
conclusions which it will be well to set clearly before the 
reader in this chapter. 

In our world, man appears as the paramount creature. 
He has been aptly termed the lord of creation; and so far 
as this applies to the creation taking place during the pres- 
ent evolutionary cycle, his claim to that title is beyond 
question. The history of the growth of our Genus is in- 
deed the history of the mental growth of its male repre- 
sentative. So true is this that, up to the culminating point 
of this growth, the study of its many manifestations is the 
study only of what men have believed, have thought, and 
have done. Not a single manifestation of this growth is 

128 


SIGNIFICANCE OF SEX 


129 


the visible outcome of the energies of women. Female 
energies only appear as part of the elements hostile to it, 
elements that have retarded or impaired it even in its 
periods of progressive activity, and have helped to swell the 
forces tending to obliterate its products in each successive 
period of Racial decay. After the culminating point of 
this growth, a change occurred, and female influence has 
become a helping factor in the final stages of the world- 
drama; but only through a passive realisation of the moral 
necessities of the great process, and not by an active par- 
ticipation in it. The substance of the higher mind-organ 
had already appeared fully formed in the brain of the male 
when this change occurred. Female influence has rendered 
the further objective elaboration of the mind-organ possi- 
ble, or at any rate, easier. But this elaboration has taken 
place primarily in the male, and not in the female. It is 
the male in these days who is furnishing the world with the 
objective knowledge which has become necessary to it; just 
as it was the male first in Archaic times to whom the secrets 
of our being revealed themselves in states of feeling, and 
who laid down the great laws of thought and of action 
which have served as the channels along which the cur- 
rents of vital ^activity have ever since flowed. 

In short, this order of things consonant with the highest 
level yet attained of mental power, this evolutionary cycle 
of the universe which we call our world, is one fashioned 
and directed by changes originating only in the male and 
not in the female. The mind-organ has become estab- 
lished, it is true, in the female as well as in the male, but 
in the former it has become established only by inheritance, ♦ 
and not by innate growth. Had it been otherwise, we 
should have manifestations of that growth; but there are 
none. The possibility that such a growth could have oc- 


130 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

curred, and yet its manifestations hidden from view by the 
suppression of the independence of women through the 
physical superiority of men, is negatived by the well-known 
fact that at the time when the creation of the higher mind- 
organ commenced, no such suppression of women existed. 
Amongst the Early Egyptians, for example, not only were 
the rights and privileges of women co-extensive with those 
possessed by men, but their social system appears to have 
been constructed to a very great extent, if not entirely, on 
the Matriarchal type; a type in which the mother is the 
head of the family, transmits her name to her children, 
and also all rights of inheritance. All the earlier Archaic 
Races appear to have originated in the midst of somewhat 
similar conditions of sexual equality, approaching very 
nearly indeed to conditions implying almost a superior so- 
cial position of the female. It was only in the growth of 
each Race, and as one Race succeeded another in the growth 
of the Genus, that these conditions disappeared, that the 
patriarchal system was established, and that the independ- 
ence of women was suppressed. The suppression of the 
independence of women in our Genus has been brought about 
by a change in the relative developmental power of the 
two sexes starting from the time of the Early Egyptians, 
and only from that time. And it is admitted that the de- 
velopment that has occurred during the present evolutionary 
cycle is not physical, but mental. No one would think of 
saying that our physique has been improved, or that we 
are stronger or more largely made, than the Genus of hu- 
man beings created before us. There are reasons for sup- 
posing, indeed, that in physique they were superior to our- 
selves. Therefore, since men have not materially im- 
proved in physique since the days of the Early Egyptians, 
it cannot be because of the physical superiority of men that 


SIGNIFICANCE OF SEX 


131 

women have been deprived of the position that they held in 
those days; nor could men have suppressed the manifesta- 
tions of mental growth in them, if any such growth had 
taken place. If women have become relatively weaker and 
smaller since those days, and men have become relatively 
stronger and larger, such physical changes are the result, 
and not the cause, of the change in relative developmental 
power, affecting primarily the capacity for mental growth. 

Hence we find that our Genus is one in which man 
stands in the front, and faces the environment. He occu- 
pies all the positions and fulfils all the functions that ap- 
pertain to the direction of the evolutionary movement, or 
to the maintenance of the social structure when this move- 
ment comes to an end in each species. His own growth 
having been modelled by the necessities surrounding the 
evolutionary movement, he is naturally fitted to fill all these 
positions and fulfil these functions. Hence he is the chief, 
the head of the family, the one who acquires things, the 
one who transacts all matters of business, the one who de- 
fends the state, the one who is responsible for the wor- 
ship of the gods and the policy of the state ; and finally, he 
is polygamous by nature, and is universally held to have 
the right to be so, even when, by various considerations, 
he is induced to refrain from its exercise. 

The woman, on the other hand, occupies in our world a 
subordinate position. In none of the societies formed by 
the different Races of our Genus has she been carried by 
the forces of growth into a prominent position. In none 
of them has she been called upon to fulfil any of the 
important functions which serve to hold a state together, 
to guard it against its enemies, to direct its movements, 
and to maintain its self-consciousness as an element in the 
world-drama that is shaping the destinies of the Universe. 


132 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

In none of them is she the head of the family ; and in none 
of them has she been allowed that license of behaviour, in 
regard to the combative and erotic instincts, which is part 
of the birthright of a man. 

Especially if we direct our attention to that epoch of the 
world’s history when the forces directing the growth of 
our Genus had reached their culminating point, do we see 
very clearly expressed the paramount position of the male. 
In the social systems of the Brahmins, the Jews, the Greeks, 
and the Romans, it is, indeed, as if the fine cords that bind 
society together had oozed out of his individuality; as if 
he alone existed. The female is utterly ignored; she only 
appears on the scene as one of his possessions. In the 
service of the state and of the gods, it is the male who fills 
every responsible position. In the family he rules every 
member by virtue of an authority against which there is 
no appeal; his wife forsakes her family and her kindred to 
become for ever after an appendage of his own state; he 
holds all property; he transmits his name alone to his chil- 
dren; all the ties, obligations, and privileges of kinship 
are counted through him, and all rights of inheritance or 
succession descend through him alone. 

The relative movements of the two sexes in our Genus 
need not be considered in greater detail. For our purpose 
it is sufficient to insist on the importance of the various cus- 
toms above cited, as embodying in themselves the para- 
mountcy of the male, a paramountcy which springs from 
the fact that in our Genus he is the developing creature. 

But if we study closely the savage Races, we discover 
traces in many separate directions of a social organisation 
wherein the male was apparently not paramount, at any 
rate in anything like the same degree as in our Genus. 
Widespread amongst the tribes of the savage world, in 


SIGNIFICANCE OF SEX 


133 


Oceania, Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Africa, and America, 
we find social customs persisting, seemingly incompatible 
with their present surroundings and with the total absence 
of ideal conceptions of womanhood and of the chivalrous 
feeling that they engender, which are nevertheless evidently 
dislocated parts of a great “Matriarchal” system of society, 
of which the woman was the keystone, just as the man is of 
our own. Amongst these customs, not occurring perhaps 
in any single instance altogether, but in varying degrees 
of prominence, and in varying degrees of admixture with cus- 
toms that proclaim the paramountcy of the male, may be 
mentioned the right of inheritance and succession through 
the female, the possession of the children by the mother 
whose name they adopt, the counting of all ties, obliga- 
tions, and privileges of kinship through the female, the 
obligation on the male on marriage of forsaking his own 
family and clan and becoming part of the family and clan 
of his wife (in some instances actually becoming the slave 
or dependent of his wife or her family) the right of 
polygamy possessed in various degrees by the female — in 
some instances apparently amounting almost to as exclu- 
sive and extensive a privilege as that possessed by the male 
in our Genus. Such perpetuated customs, evidently vestigial 
remains of what was at one time a very different form of 
social system to any that exists at the present day, belong 
more particularly to the family organisation. But, as I 
have tried to point out, the family organisation is only part 
and parcel of the general social organisation of the com- 
munity. With us the father is not head of the family be- 
cause of any ethereal right possessed by him to dominate 
his wife and children, but simply for the same reason 
that causes him to be the more efficient director in all mat- 
ters — social, religious, political, and military. Thus we 


134 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

should expect to find these vestigial family customs of the 
Matriarchal social system supported by others relating more 
especially to the dominant position of the female in the 
state; bearing in mind, however, that such insignia of pub- 
lic authority would be the very first customs attacked and 
obliterated as a result of the growth of our own Genus, 
so that their vestiges would be proportionately less easy to 
find, and their original intention far more obliterated. Such 
customs actually do occur in abundance in every part of the 
globe amongst the Natural Races. 

Thus in North America, among the Iroquois and other 
tribes having a clan-organisation, the matrons had the ap- 
pointment of the “sachem” or peace-chief, and the Wyan- 
dottes had a government consisting of four women who 
chose the chief from their own brothers or sons. His dep- 
osition was also the affair of the women of a clan-assembly 
in which they had a right to vote. The female managers 
of festivals, the maintainers of religion, as they have been 
called, had the duty cast upon them of keeping an eye on 
customs and religious exercises. Even in councils relating 
to war or external affairs the women either spoke themselves 
or had a special deputy to speak for them. In urgent cases 
they held an independent council and sent out their own 
messengers with “wampum.” In Africa, instances are com- 
mon where women take part in the government with men, 
and even go forth to battle by their side. In Dahomey, the 
elite of the army was composed of women; here also the 
women alone engaged in trade ; they also helped to govern, 
and the queen alone had the right of life and death over 
the women. Female sovereigns are common, in many in- 
stances succeeding each other in an unbroken line for con- 
siderable periods of time. In Unyoro the queen-mother en- 
joyed as much respect as the king, if not more. She in- 


SIGNIFICANCE OF SEX 


i35 

habited her own town, had ministers, officials, head-chiefs, 
and great herds of oxen. In war time, the first thing was 
to hide her since, if she were to be taken prisoner, the king 
would wholly lose the consideration of his subjects. 
Amongst the Malays, women exercise great influence as 
priestesses. In Tahiti, Tonga, and New Zealand, women 
act or acted till recently as priestesses and prophets. In 
Pelew a social organisation exists for women corresponding 
to that of the men, and running almost parallel with it. 
Just as the chief of the men in Pelew must belong to the 
family whose seat is Ajdit, so the eldest woman of this 
family is the queen of the women. Beside her stand a num- 
ber of female chiefs, with whom she keeps an eye upon the 
good behaviour of the women, holds her tribunal, and gives 
judgment without any man being allowed to interfere.* 
Such traces of female supremacy amongst the savage 
Races of to-day might be multiplied indefinitely; but the 
above will suffice for the present purpose. Every custom, 
every privilege, and every obligation that in our own Genus 
stand as insignia of the authority and the superior develop- 
mental power of the male, occur in this enumeration; but 
with this singular and significant difference, that they point 
to the authority of the female and not the male. Anthro- 
pologists are agreed in looking upon these perpetuated cus- 
toms as vestigial remains of a “Matriarchal” system of so- 
ciety, antecedent in time to our own, of which the woman 
was the central figure. The general view, however, is that 
she occupied the principal position solely because she was 
the mother; and the actual extent of her predominance is 
variously regarded. Bachofen, indeed, in “Das Mutter- 
recht” went so far as to assume that this Matriarchal social 
period was actually a period of complete female supremacy 
* Ratzel, “History of Mankind.” 


136 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


in social and political as well as in purely family matters. 
But the limitations of his point of view prevented him also 
from seeing that this supremacy proceeded from anything 
more than simple “mother-right” ; and he not merely lost 
the deeper significance of the facts revealed to him, but was 
scarcely able to maintain his own limited position, ad- 
vanced as it was and unsupported by any conception of 
the whole scheme of evolution in which it had a natural 
place, in face of the unconscious bias with which such an as- 
sumption would necessarily be regarded by thinkers of the 
present day. 

The recognition of such a constitution of primeval so- 
ciety as is implied in Bachoven’s conception, indeed, is very 
difficult from the point of view offered by the current theory 
of evolution. For it forces on one the necessity of account- 
ing for a complete change in the relative position of the 
sexes in the transformation from the Matriarchal to the 
Patriarchal condition. “Mother-right” was assumed to be 
the natural consequence of a state wherein the sexes mingled 
and mated promiscuously, without any of those restrictions 
which, in a civilised society, make the marriage-state a 
strictly conditioned and exclusive relationship; so that the 
woman was the only parent that could be identified. In 
such circumstances, of course, she would necessarily be- 
come the head of the family, and attain a greater impor- 
tance in all matters relating to the family, and to the in- 
heritance of property, than the male. It must be borne 
in mind, however, that the assumption is one which rests 
on absolutely no foundation of fact. It is well-known that 
in the uttermost sections of the savage world the marriage 
union exists as a strictly conditioned and exclusive relation- 
ship. Not even can the fact that we are lineally descended 
from the brute be any longer cited as affording a reasonable 


SIGNIFICANCE OF SEX 


137 


probability that such a promiscuous mingling of the sexes 
must have preceded the exclusive and even monogamous 
marriage unions, which we now know to have been the rule 
at the very dawn of the historical progression of humanity; 
for in many species of the animal world prolonged and 
even permanent unions of this exclusive nature are the 
rule. So long, however, as the assumption was allowed, 
and the conception stood on this basis and implied noth- 
ing further, it presented no difficulty. For the obvious ex- 
planation of the transformation from the Matriarchal to 
the Patriarchal condition was that, as the tendencies to- 
wards civilisation increased in the man, he became conscious 
that one of the obligations imposed on him by this new 
state w r as the proper performance of parental duties. Urged 
by this feeling he would claim the position of a father, and 
assert his authority in restricting the license hitherto en- 
joyed by the female in the matter of promiscuous mating; 
and once he assumed this position, the woman’s importance 
would vanish, and she would necessarily become subject 
to him in all affairs relating to the family, just as she was 
in all other functions and relations of their existence. Con- 
sidered in this light, the transformation involved no real 
change in the relative position of the sexes. The man was 
always the superior, and the woman the subject, creature. 
The woman obtained for a time in the earliest stage of 
social existence a fictitious importance, by reason of her be- 
ing the mother; but the man at once displaced her when it 
pleased him to do so. 

But the moment the Matriarchal form of society is held 
to imply a state of things in which the woman was supreme, 
not only in the family, but also in all the outside functions 
and relations of existence, then the question assumes quite 
a different aspect. For there is necessarily implied in this 


i 3 8 the significance of ancient religions 

conception a relative position of the sexes which is abso- 
lutely different from that which became established in the 
Patriarchal system; and the anthropologist who attempted 
to explain the relation of the facts that he registered, was 
confronted with a problem far more difficult of solution 
than that offered to him by the other. For he had to ex- 
plain why the woman, who in the earliest state of society 
occupied the supreme and executive position, and must 
therefore have been naturally fitted to occupy this position, 
did actually, in the historical progression of humanity im- 
mediately following, lose this position and become sub- 
ject to man. Even if it be admitted for the sake of argu- 
ment that the woman did, in the first place, obtain this 
position of pre-eminence through the fact of her being the 
mother, and therefore the sole parent, in a promiscuous 
mingling and mating of the two sexes; why, having ob- 
tained this position and having proved herself therefore 
to be fitted to occupy this position, did she not retain it in 
the ensuing ages'? Obviously, this question cannot be an- 
swered in terms of the theory of evolution which postulates 
natural selection or a selection exerted by the environment 
on the individual, as the sole determinative process. For 
no one would dream of suggesting that some change in 
the environment has had the effect of rendering the man 
the most fit to occupy the supreme position. The environ- 
ment has actually become more favourable to the continued 
pre-eminence of the woman, who is handicapped in the 
struggle for existence by reason of her maternal functions ; 
for it is plain that man’s control over Nature has become 
very much less dependent on his physical condition than it 
was at that remote period. 

The difficulty of accounting for any such complete 
change in the relative position of the sexes has thus in- 


SIGNIFICANCE OF SEX 


139 


duced a tendency to ignore the true bearings of these strange 
customs. Many anthropologists have preferred to regard 
them, and to represent them, as being in themselves not 
sufficient to warrant the extreme conclusion indicated above. 
But from our point of view, it is impossible thus to ignore 
their true significance. For we must regard them in the 
light of all that we have already noted concerning the 
effects that the growth of the historic Races has had on the 
savage world. And the moment we thus regard them in a 
scientific manner, we are inevitably driven to the conclu- 
sion that these customs do establish beyond question the 
fact that in the human society which came into being im- 
mediately before our own development began, the woman 
occupied the same universally predominant position that 
man attained to in the subsequent ages. None of these 
customs could have originated as a consequence of the de- 
velopment in the historic Races ; for chief amongst the ideals 
of this new development was the supremacy of man. In 
this development he was the messenger of the gods; and, 
subject as he was to the obligations imposed on him by the 
religious consciousness, he had to assert his position, and 
could not afford to tolerate such a condition of things — 
far less to create a state of society in which the direction 
of affairs was allowed to lapse into the hands of women — 
any more than he could afford to do any of the things that 
shut against him the gates of paradise, and opened for him 
the jaws of hell. Thus, these customs must be the re- 
mains of a social structure which has been riven and shat- 
tered almost to complete obliteration by the repeated as- 
saults of that long series of super-imposed Racial move- 
ments, to which the historical progression of Mankind has 
given rise. Is it at all wonderful that these customs should 
in greater part have disappeared altogether, and that where 


i 4 o THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

they still exist they should do so in such attenuated form, 
and so mingled up with preponderant institutions of a hos- 
tile and alien character, that their original value can 
scarcely be discerned 4 ? Of course not. What is wonder- 
ful is that they should have persisted at all. And the fact 
that they have thus persisted, in spite of the overwhelming 
processes of destruction and attrition to which they have 
been subjected, is sure proof, not only that the social struc- 
ture in question was universal, but further that it was the 
consolidated production of the whole output of the develop- 
mental energy of a great cycle of evolutionary activity. 

And, as a matter of fact, there is also no difficulty, from 
our point of view, in accepting these conclusions. The 
theory of evolution advanced in this work is capable of ac- 
counting, not only for the origin of the Matriarchal sys- 
tem without the unwarrantable assumption which at present 
is held to explain it, but also for that complete change in 
the relative position of the sexes which has indubitably taken 
place since the days when it was in vogue. For according 
to this theory the creative and determinative process is the 
development of a Generic Organism in the virginal ele- 
ments of the Germ-plasm. If, as we have seen, in the 
historical progression of humanity the male has been raised 
to a dominant position because he has been the sole develop- 
ing creature, then it is plain that during this specific period 
of evolutionary activity, the development of the Generic Or- 
ganism has been restricted to the Germ-plasm of the male. 
The viriginal plasma-element of the female must have 
remained inert; although she has inherited a new organ- 
isation from the male — the new woman, in other words, 
being entirely developed from the virginal element of the 
male Germ-plasm. But if the development of the Ge- 
neric Organism can be thus restricted to one sex, there 


SIGNIFICANCE OF SEX 


141 

is obviously no reason why it should not be so restricted 
to the female, as well as to the male sex. The remark- 
able variations in the relative position of the sexes in the 
animal kingdom certainly point to the conclusion that not 
infrequently the female is the sole developing creature. 
Thus it is well known that amongst snakes, fishes, in- 
sects, crustaceans, and in general amongst all classes be- 
low the level of amphibians, the Genera in which the fe- 
male is the largest and strongest preponderate very con- 
siderably over those in which the reverse relation obtains. 
In some instances, especially amongst the lowest animals, 
the advantage in respect of size, function, capacity, and 
strength, is so conspicuously in favour of the female, and 
the male cuts such a sorry figure in all the relations of 
life, and has such a bad time of it altogether, that there 
is absolutely no room for doubt that in these Genera the 
female has been the sole developing creature. 

These observations establish beyond question the fact 
that the restriction of the development of the Generic 
Organism to the female sex is a common event in the 
economy of evolution. 

The reader must understand that the restriction of devel- 
opmentary capacity to one sex would not necessarily cause 
the two sexes always to differ widely from each other in 
point of size, strength, beauty, and other results of devel- 
opment. For whilst the active development takes place 
in only one sex, the products of development would con- 
stantly be transmitted by inheritance to the progeny of 
the other sex. The new organisation thus transmitted 
would, in the early stages of the Generic process, be 
feebler and have more difficulty in establishing itself 
against the resistance of the pre-existing structure of the 
individual, than in the developing sex; so that in the 


142 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

Races or species produced during the early vigour of the 
Generic process, the difference between the two sexes 
would be most marked. But as soon as the energy of 
the Generic process began to wane, then this difference 
would naturally become less accentuated, and would 
finally disappear. For on the one hand the developmental 
energy of the creative sex would be gradually disappear- 
ing, and on the other hand the new organisation in the 
inheriting sex, having overcome its initial difficulties, 
would be gradually getting stronger; so that the final re- 
sult of the whole process would be to bring them to the 
same level of structure and capacity. Thus the fact that 
in some Genera the two sexes seem to be fairly equal in 
structure and capacity is quite in keeping with the view 
that the two sexes operate singly and independently of 
each other in the evolutionary process. 

It would be outside the purpose of this chapter, or of 
this work, to go further and discuss the question whether 
we are justified, in the light of these considerations, to as- 
sign to the two sexes a true alternation of function in the 
economy of evolution. Considering how admirably such 
an alternation of function would subserve the continuity 
of the evolutionary progression — for without such an alter- 
nation of function it is clear that long ages would have 
to elapse after each Generic process before the virginal 
plasma could recuperate itself sufficiently to be able to 
give rise to a fresh development in the same stock — the 
suggestion cannot fail to arise in our minds that this con- 
ception affords us a glimpse into the fundamental signifi- 
cance of sex. This much is certain, however, that from 
our point of view, there is no difficulty in understanding 
how the woman came to occupy in the primeval state of 
society immediately preceding our own development the 


SIGNIFICANCE OF SEX 


i43 


supreme and executive position. We may conclude that 
she attained that position for just the same reason as man 
attained his position in the historical progression of hu- 
manity; for the simple reason that in the Generic period 
of development which produced that society, she was the 
sole developing creature. 

Not only does this conception explain the relations of 
the sexes in that primeval state of society; it affords us 
the clearest possible explanation of the varying phases of 
these relations in the historical progression of humanity. 
Men and women, who were exactly equal in privilege and 
capacity at the dawn of our Generic movement, gradually 
diverged in these respects from one another, until at the 
time of the Brahmins and Jews the difference between 
them was as great as it possibly could be. Since then 
they have been gradually converging again; and there can 
be no doubt that in the future they will regain once more the 
relative positions that they occupied at the beginning of 
the Generic movement. 

The new mind-organ which has added itself to the 
anatomy of the individual is, therefore, one which has 
come into existence during a period of evolutionary ac- 
tivity in which the male was the sole developing creature; 
the pre-existing mind-organ was likewise fashioned dur- 
ing a period when the female was the sole developing 
creature. It is thus possible to differentiate these two 
sets of mind-elements by the terms Neo-andric and 
Palseogynic, the Neo-andric being the new mind-organ, 
and the Palseogynic the pre-existing one. The convenience 
of this nomenclature will become apparent in the further 
chapters of this work, in which I propose to deal sep- 
arately with each successive stage of the historical devel- 
opment of humanity. 


CHAPTER III 


FIRST STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 

The library discovered in recent years in the royal palace 
at Nineveh affords us very valuable evidence as to what 
was the first stage in the process of religious ideation. 
We have known, of course, for a very long time that the 
worship of the demon and its representative fetich, to- 
gether with the vast system of witchcraft always associated, 
occupies a very important place in most of the great re- 
ligions of antiquity; and we have also known that the 
greatest part of the religious beliefs and practices in vogue 
at the present day amongst savages belong to the same 
category. But in these different settings there are many 
circumstances that render difficult a certain judgment as 
to their true place in the development of the religious 
idea; and from our point of view, the whole conception is 
naturally so abhorrent and impossible that the difficulties 
have been increased a hundredfold. But in this wonder- 
ful library we have had preserved for us a vast literature 
embodying the feelings emanating from several successive 
stages of the development of the religious idea, which car- 
ries us right back to the beginning of the development, be- 
fore things got muddled up through the fusing together 
into the same religious system of elements belonging to 
separate stages of the growth. And the earliest part of 
this literature consists of a massive array of tablets, on 
which is recorded the full and sustained expression of a 
religious consciousness, wherein every particle of Nature 
is represented as pregnant with wild and horrible demons, 
144 


FIRST STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 145 

that entirely fill the supernatural world, and cause suffer- 
ing and terror to human beings. This, then, is the first 
expression of the historical development of the religious 
consciousness in humanity. 

This early stage in the process of religious ideation was 
that of malignant Animism. The religious consciousness 
first made men aware that something portentous was hap- 
pening to them, and that this portentous thing was of a 
supernatural character, through feelings associated with 
the perception of natural objects and phenomena. It was 
especially those objects, situations, or processes in the out- 
side world which possessed characters marking them out 
from the common, and in particular rendering them mys- 
terious, that proved themselves pre-eminently provocative 
of these feelings. The perception of these phenomena, 
which they had hitherto regarded with indifference, now 
produced in them most remarkable effects. Each percep- 
tion was instantly followed by a brilliant glow of con- 
sciousness, which caused it to flame up into the concept of 
a personified representation of itself; and at the same time 
the individual experienced an overwhelming shock, as if 
something or somebody had hit him a knock-down blow. 
It was no longer the object that was visualised, but the 
caricature of a personality radiant as the psychic illumina- 
tion which gave birth to it, masquerading in the familiar 
lineaments of the object; and the apparition paralysed for 
the moment all power of thought and volition in the aston- 
ished and panic-stricken individual. 

There were therefore as many divine presentations as 
the mind of the individual was capable of conceiving ob- 
jective ideas. Not merely every object, but every dif- 
ferent phase of an object awoke, through its perception, 
that sudden brilliant psychic illumination which heralded 


146 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

in consciousness the presence of the divine. This con- 
stantly repeated imagination naturally enough struck ter- 
ror into the hearts of men. For not only was the mere 
intrusion of a mass of new and active determinants calcu- 
lated to upset that coherence of ideas and certainty of re- 
lationships on which depended the orderly tenor and the 
comfort of their lives; but the painful shock and the mo- 
mentary obliteration of their faculties which every mani- 
festation induced could not fail to fill their minds with the 
horrible certainty that the manifestants were malignant 
spirits peculiarly hostile to themselves, and capable of in- 
flicting all sorts of injuries on them in a supernatural man- 
ner. Thus every phenomenon, which was in the least de- 
gree out of the common, flooded their minds with all the 
horrors of a tortured imagination; and in every mystery 
there lurked a demon that gripped them by the throat and 
threw them into a paroxysm of terror. And the idea of 
death, which ranks amongst the most mysterious of phe- 
nomena, reared itself up in their imagination as the su- 
preme embodiment of this phantasmagoria of horror, so 
that the thought of it became an agony almost too great 
for human beings to bear. Of all the demons, that asso- 
ciated with the phenomenon of death was the most terri- 
fying; and the persecuted spirit of a dead man, itself ex- 
cessively malignant, haunted the imagination of his rela- 
tives long after his decease, and vented on them the suf- 
ferings which it was itself undergoing at the hands of its 
dread familiar. 

It is easy enough to understand, by reference to the 
physiological mechanism of the higher nerve-tissues, why 
those objects w T hich had something in them mysterious or 
out of the common were most effective in inducing the 
divine manifestation. It was simply because these objects 


FIRST STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 147 

necessarily produced an impression on the Palseogynic 
mind-organ of a kind that lent itself readily to the propa- 
gation of a peculiarly powerful stimulation to the Neo- 
andric ganglia. I may remind the reader that we can dif- 
ferentiate from each other the two sets of mind-elements 
concerned by the terms of Palseogynic and Neo-andric; 
the former term referring to the older and objective mind- 
organ, the latter to the new elements, which could only 
produce in consciousness presentations of a subjective 
character. Now an object or situation in the outside 
world, which in every one of its aspects or bearings was 
perfectly familiar to the individual, stimulated in the lat- 
ter a Palseogynic group of cells that had been so trained 
to act together expeditiously under all circumstances, that 
they practically formed a completely non-resisting circuit 
for the passage of the nervous energy aroused. Moreover, 
all the modes of action or mental attitudes necessitated 
by the object or situation, would have been well practised 
and selected by oft- repeated experience and judgment; so 
that the contained energy of the idea would radiate easily 
away through the appropriate channels so thoroughly pre- 
pared for its passage. In the whole mental process, there- 
fore, evoked by such a familiar presentment in the outside 
world, there would be no sudden stop, and but little slow- 
ing at any point, of the nervous current inducing stimula- 
tion of the various elements. There would be little, 
therefore, to encourage the diversion of the current in the 
direction of the Neo-andric ganglia; and the amount of 
leakage of the current in this direction would necessarily 
be very small. 

On the other hand, in the idea-group representing in 
consciousness an object or situation in the outside world 
with which the individual was not thus familiar, there 


1 48 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

would be a correspondingly less easy passage for the nerv- 
ous energy. It would therefore tend to become pent up 
in one or another element of the group, seeking the pass- 
age which was refused to it, and creating a state of ten- 
sion in the nervous tissues which would force the stim- 
ulating current in the direction of the Neo-andric 
ganglia. Hence there would occur an intense psychic 
illumination of the latter, at each sufficiently powerful 
presentment of an object or situation in the outside world 
which was out of the common or had in it something 
mysterious. 

But it is clear that such a stimulation of the Neo-andric 
ganglion, when thus produced, would tend for a while to 
create a condition of the Palseogynic mind-organ in which 
the perception of even the most familiar object would at 
once reveal the presence of the demon. For, as we have 
already said, the stimulation of the Neo-andric ganglion 
throws the whole Palseogynic mind-organ out of gear, so 
that for awhile it is incapable of behaving in its ordinary 
manner. Therefore for that time the same sequence of 
events would follow the perception of a familiar object 
as has already been described as following the perception 
of a mysterious object. A Palaeogynic group of cells 
would become charged with nervous energy which would 
only with difficulty radiate away along its accustomed 
channels; the energy of the idea would become pent up, 
and the resulting vibratory disturbance would propagate 
itself through the intercellular matrix into the Neo-andric 
substance. 

In other words, although the faculty of stimulating the 
divine consciousness was primarily possessed only by those 
objects which were out of the common or had something 
mysterious about them, yet as the result of the state of 


FIRST STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 149 

mind induced by the constantly repeated visitations of 
such demons of large dimensions, every object, however in- 
significant and familiar, came to acquire the same dread 
significance. In every particle of the world of existent 
realities there came to lurk a malignant presence. So that 
these demons required no particular solicitation, no special 
methods of procedure, to induce them to appear; they 
thronged on the individual in great swarms from every 
quarter. As one of the old Chaldean tablets tells us: 
“They fall as rain from the sky, they spring from the 
earth, — they steal from house to house — doors do not stop 
them, — bolts do not shut them out, — they blow in at the 
roof like winds.” 

But whilst all material objects would thus in general 
be demon-infected, and have the power of terrifying hu- 
man beings, it is easy enough to see, since the supernatural 
effect was in inverse proportion to the familiarity of the 
object, that different men and different classes of men, 
would be very differently affected by different classes of 
objects. Especially would this be the case if, as we have 
seen reason to assume, men were already civilised before 
the supernatural revealed itself to them, and had already 
become so far advanced in the various crafts which they 
used in the economy of their existence, as to have accus- 
tomed themselves to a differentiation of labour; so that 
some men concentrated their attention only on one kind 
of work, and others on another. We know, at the very 
least, that men did many things at the earliest times of 
which we have knowledge that require considerable 
manipulation of materials and considerable familiarity 
with all their properties and possible modes of behaviour. 
They cut down trees and built boats with them, they dug 
canals and governed the flow of the rushing waters, they 


150 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

quarried stone and fashioned its hardest varieties into the 
most exquisite shapes, they extracted certain metals from 
their ores and compounded them into useful implements 
and delicate ornaments, and they navigated their rivers 
and seas. In each one of these divisons of labour, there- 
fore, there were men who had become thoroughly 
familiarised with a certain class of material objects, and 
thoroughly accustomed to working their will on them. 
Hence it is clear that when the supernatural first revealed 
itself to human beings in its purely malignant aspect, even 
though it was capable of manifesting itself in every ma- 
terial object, yet certain classes of men would each re- 
main immune from the evil influences emanating from a 
particular class of objects. Thus the most fascinating 
figure of a tree would not stun the worker in the woods; 
the jagged, jutting rock would fail to awe the worker 
in the quarry; the endless force and flow of the gliding 
river would not paralyse the digger of canals; the over- 
whelming majesty of the sea would not appal the mariner; 
and to the man accustomed to extract metals from their 
ores, even fire would be something that could be dealt 
with without inordinate fear and trembling. Not that 
the demons belonging to these objects would not exist at 
all for the favoured ones. They would have no doubt 
that they did exist, for the simple reason that on certain 
occasions, as explained above, when upset by a visitation 
from some other class of divine presentation, their state of 
mind would render them susceptible, and the demons 
would appear to them as to anybody else. But as they 
could ordinarily accost these material objects, from which 
other people shrank shudderingly away, without being in 
the least daunted, it would necessarily become apparent 
to everybody as well as to themselves, that they possessed 


FIRST STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 15 1 

some power or virtue which enabled them to dominate and 
control the demons. 

This power or virtue could not fail to become a sub- 
ject of keen speculation amongst the favoured ones; and 
the attention thus awakened in the minds of men who 
were capable of dwelling on the mysteries of the situation 
without entirely losing control over their faculties, would 
inevitably lead to certain well-founded conclusions; on 
which presently reared itself a huge system of sorcery, 
witchcraft, and fetich-worship, which was capable of miti- 
gating in some degree the terrors of this period of anguish 
in the religious development of humanity. 

To understand this, the reader must remember that what 
made an object capable of exciting the evil effect was sim- 
ply the absorption of the observer’s attention in those 
of its features which were unfamiliar or incomprehensible. 
The moment he concentrated his attention on those fea- 
tures of the object which rendered it a familiar and com- 
prehensible thing, the horrible imagination vanished. 
Anything that tended to remind him forcibly of that as- 
pect of a natural object which was familiar and devoid of 
the qualities that appealed to the imagination, therefore, 
had the power of so paralysing the demon that it could no 
longer afflict him. 

Now the perception of every natural object has in it 
certain parts which, by leading our thoughts into the 
realm of the vague, the intangible, and the unknown, ap- 
peal strongly to the imagination. The mere fact of ex- 
istence presents us with a problem that strains our powers 
of comprehension to the utmost; and beyond that every 
natural object has stamped on it the impress of forces 
which belong to a vast and inscrutable Universe, cease- 
lessly operating, and utterly incomprehensible. Neverthe- 


152 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

less, it is possible to regard each natural object in such 
a way that the perception of it which engages our atten- 
tion is utterly commonplace, and devoid of those parts 
which are apt to lead us out of our depths. Thus the 
weirdest figure of a tree will lose its fascination when re- 
garded as a mere mass of timber; and the infinite sugges- 
tions awakened by sight of sea and sky are immeasurably 
reduced if you look upon the one as merely a basin of 
water, and on the other as an inverted bowl. Even death 
may, in this manner, be deprived of its sting. For though 
there is no greater horror than that awakened by the idea 
of death, and the sight of the last agony of an animal or 
man dying from natural causes puts a strain on our feeL 
ings which everyone is conscious of; yet our own killing 
of a living thing does not afflict us in anything like the 
same degree, and the thought of it as food enables us to 
look upon the dead thing without the slightest awakening 
of a panic-stricken imagination. 

But to individuals of that period, when the new de- 
velopment of mind-substance had only just begun, this 
mode of regarding things was far more easy and natural 
than it is to us. For before the Neo-andric ganglia came 
into being, there was nothing in the psychological condi- 
tion of the individual to render him liable to the fascina- 
tion of those parts of the perception of a natural object 
which now appeal so strongly to our imagination. His 
mind grasped only those parts of a perception which were 
of material importance to him; all the rest, especially if 
they were in any way elusive or incomprehensible, were by 
his habit of thought excluded from representation in con- 
sciousness. The obvious and commonplace part of a per- 
ception was just that which always gripped his attention; 
and even in the presence of unfamiliar objects and situa- 


FIRST STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 153 

tions, the natural tendency of his mind was to recognise 
in them chiefly that which enabled him to identify them, 
through points of resemblance and analogy, as somewhat 
uncommon presentments of things that were essentially 
commonplace and familiar. 

On the appearance of the Neo-andric ganglia, this old 
habit of thought was ruthlessly upset whenever the indi- 
vidual approached an object that was capable of awaken- 
ing in him a full sense of its mystery. But whenever the 
circumstances were such that the triumph of the Neo- 
andric ganglia was not so complete — as would often hap- 
pen in the case of the favoured ones referred to — then this 
habit of thought would necessarily tend to reappear; and 
on every occasion when it succeeded in arresting the up- 
rush of new sensations it revealed to the individual the 
means whereby he might save himself from the terrors 
that beset him. Thus the man who was accustomed to 
work in the forest — where he hewed down trees into logs 
of timber, which he subsequently fashioned into various 
useful shapes — would soon come to realise that the fixing 
of his attention on a shaped mass of timber had a most 
potent effect in steadying his nerves and causing the 
dreaded apparition to vanish, when he was threatened by a 
visitation from a tree-demon. It did this because it re- 
minded him so strongly of the fact that the tree, which was 
threatening to shape itself into the vague outlines of a hor- 
rid presence, was, after all, nothing but a mass of wood, 
that the illusion vanished. But all that the man was con- 
scious of was that the piece of wood, which he had 
fashioned with his own hands, had the power of pro- 
tecting him against the threatened assault of the tree- 
demon. This, mind you, was not a delusion, but a real 
fact. In the now mysterious piece of wood his startled 


154 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

vision caught the glint of a supernatural being; and the 
more he thought of it in this way, and the more he carved 
it so as to represent the phantasm which it suggested, the 
greater grew its power of circumventing the wild demons 
of the woods. It became a Fetich; a substance which the 
labour of his own hands had made pregnant with a demon 
that he could call into being at any moment and that was 
powerful enough to drive away the wild demons of Nature. 

The same thing happened in respect of every class of 
natural objects and phenomena. Innumerable Fetiches 
were made. These were not to be handled with impunity 
by anybody and everybody; for the demons with which 
they were pregnant might easily become wild and unman- 
ageable if called into being by one who had neither the 
comprehension, nor the aptitude of mind, that was neces- 
sary to govern them. But for those of the favoured in- 
dividuals who had the necessary aptitude, and who took 
the trouble to become adepts in the new science of dodging 
the demons, the matter was different. For the Fetich, 
having been made and fashioned by the individual, and 
being in so large a part of itself a perfectly commonplace 
and familiar thing, could emit only so faint a stimulation 
of the Neo-andric ganglia, that it was never sufficient to 
carry the adept out of his depth. Thus remaining mas- 
ter of the situation, he became so perfect in the practice 
of his art that even in the most trying situations, when 
the wildest of the natural demons threatened to shake his 
mind to its very depths, he never lost control over his 
Fetich, and was able by its aid to steady his nerves and 
finally subdue his subjective enemy. 

Thus there arose in each community a group of men, 
widely differentiated from the vulgar crowd by the strik- 
ing fact that they had such power over the demons of the 


FIRST STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 155 

natural world that they could, each in his own particular 
sphere, bid defiance to these malignant beings. This 
power, which was manifest to everyone, was in its nature 
so mysterious that it raised them at once to the rank of 
demons in the imagination of the multitude. Each adept 
became a sorcerer; a supernatural being, as terrifying and 
malignant as any of the wild demons of Nature, but pos- 
sessed of the stupendous power of making the latter sub- 
servient to his will. Every word, act, and gesture of the 
sorcerer exerted, therefore, a talismanic influence over the 
ordinary individual, gripping his attention with a horrible 
fascination, prostrating his faculties, and leaving his 
mind completely at the mercy of the driving force of any 
suggestion which they might contain. 

But there was this in favour of the ordinary individual 
in his relations with the sorcerer, that the latter was at the 
same time a human being, capable of being influenced in 
his attitude by considerations which had not the slightest 
effect on the natural demons. Although a hated and 
dreaded personality, one might drag oneself to his feet 
with a frantic show of adulation, and make offer of those 
good things which human beings love to possess and enjoy. 
Thus treated, the sorcerer naturally showed no reluctance 
to use his powers for the behoof of those who applied to 
him for assistance; and to attain this purpose he instituted 
the weird ritual of demon-worship, as it has somewhat 
erroneously been termed, the central feature of which was 
the “devil-dance.” To understand this, the reader must 
again bear in mind the physiological antagonism of the 
Palaeogynic and Neo-andric elements. If the one was 
strengthened, the other was necessarily diminished. And 
the “devil-dance” was essentially the setting up of a con- 
flict betwixt the two sets of mind-elements, in the very 


1 5 6 the significance of ancient religions 

person of the sorcerer, and the drawing of the suppliant 
assistants, by the fascination of the dramatic representa- 
tion, into participation in the final triumph over the 
natural demon. 

Surrounded by his clients, and armed with his Fetich, 
the sorcerer attacked and wrestled subjectively with the 
demon which he was desired to subdue. Approaching the 
awful presence in the guise at first of a person over- 
whelmed with terror, he gradually increased the resistive 
power of the Palseogynic mind-organ by concentrating his 
attention on the Fetich. He checked the wild impulse to 
flight that possessed him, and despite the continued agita- 
tion of his limbs, remained near the spot or circled round 
it in a rage of obstinate persistence. The shouts that the 
impulse to scare away the demon first made him give vent 
to, sobered themselves into cries and groans of anguish, 
as he steeled himself into continued contact with the evil 
creature. More and more, as the influence of the Fetich 
strengthened the resistance of his Palseogynic mind-ele- 
ments, he succeeded in checking these expressions of fear 
and suffering. Each outburst of agony became clogged 
with a leaden weight and died away for a moment, ere it 
broke out again. The whole volume of sound and move- 
ment gradually resolved itself into a rhythmical succession 
of the alternate phases of expression which pictured the 
conflict that was going on. The more this rhythmic 
quality of the manifestation increased, the more the de- 
mon became entangled and enchained, and the expressions 
of its influence died away into the gasps and sobs of a 
tortured breath, and the fruitless clenchings of convulsed 
muscles. The fascinated assistants, responsive to the tri- 
umphant rhythm, were caught up by it into a furious 
ecstasy, and emphasised it in their shouts, in the clapping 


FIRST STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 157 

of their hands, in the stamping of their feet, or in the 
beating on substances that gave forth a sound. Then sud- 
denly with awful swiftness the end was reached and the 
spell was broken; the sorcerer fell, writhing and foaming 
at the mouth, in the last agony of his conflict with the 
demon; and the assistants, carried away by the wild up- 
rush of their pent-up feelings, rose in a blind frenzy of 
liberated fury to wreak their vengeance on the evil crea- 
ture, which now was powerless to harm them. 

Nothing more need be said to explain the origin of the 
horrible deeds which became part of the ritual of Fetich 
or Devil worship. Of course the ritual for the exorcism 
of the death-demon necessarily shaped itself into the kill- 
ing and eating of human beings; so that this performance 
became customary when anybody died, who was allowed 
to die in a natural manner. The reader will scarcely need 
to be told, however, that the horror of such a mode of 
death might render customary the strangest and most 
abhorrent practices with regard to those who were very 
ill. Short might be the shrift of the sick person whom 
the concentrated terror of the devil-dance did not purge 
of his demon. But beyond this, the murderous feelings 
evoked in the assistants by the performance of every devil- 
dance, no matter what demon it was intended to exorcise, 
necessarily could find vent only in the shedding of the 
blood of some sentient creature; and the sorcerer, in order 
to save his own skin — for the close identification, in part 
of himself with the demon, placed him in a position of 
considerable danger, — was bound to make the provision of 
suitable victims an essential part of the whole performance. 
And the human being, as not only the most sentient of all 
creatures, but also the one in whom each lacerated feeling 
was most apt to express its torture in an intelligible man- 


158 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

ner, was for obvious reasons — especially if he were an 
enemy — the most suitable sort of victim. 

The devil-dance, however, was not the limit of the sor- 
cerer’s power. It was the means by which he made 
that power manifest; and he was naturally called upon to 
manifest this power at frequent stated intervals, and on 
the occasion of any special event in the lives of his clients. 
These frequently repeated exhibitions and experiences 
deeply impressed the minds of the multitude; so that each 
individual became exceedingly susceptible to the influence 
of every article used in, or in any way associated with, the 
performance. The sight of any such article at once threw 
him into a most pitiable condition. It re-awakened in his 
consciousness the whole process, and he found himself 
once more locked in mortal combat with a demon, whose 
malignity was increased a thousandfold because it was 
struggling for its own existence — with this difference, 
that in the absence of the aid afforded him by the sorcerer 
in the actual devil-dance, his powers were wholly inade- 
quate to carrying on the contest to a successful issue. Left 
to his own resources he could not secure that attrition of 
the Neo-andric ganglia which was what the sorcerer always 
effected; and the struggle betwixt the two sets of mind- 
elements went on unceasingly until they had mutually 
destroyed each other. It was a thousand times worse than 
having to do with a natural demon in the ordinary way; 
for then, even if he could not save himself by flight, the 
complete surrender of his faculties to the feeling of terror 
saved him from a recurrence of the shock; the evil influ- 
ence passed on, leaving him trembling but free. But 
here, by the very nature of the process, he was caged in, 
forced into continued contact with a savagely irritated de- 
mon, and the struggle was necessarily one to the death. 


FIRST STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 159 

This susceptibility of the individual placed him entirely at 
the mercy of the sorcerer. The latter might bewitch him 
either by word or gesture, or through the influence of his 
Fetich; or if he did not care to appear in the matter, he 
had only to place some article carrying with it the sug- 
gestion of the devil-dance — a little mass of clotted blood 
and earth maybe, or the mangled remnant of a victim — in 
some place where it was sure to attract the notice of the 
doomed one at a propitious moment. The spell was sure 
to act. The individual might feel only physical malaise; 
or he might be worried by a feeling of strangeness which 
invaded his faculties, and rendered them inert and in- 
capable of grasping the reality of outside things; or he 
might be thrown at once into horrible convulsions. But 
in whatever way it seized him, he was bound to die, unless 
relieved in good time by the intervention of another and 
more friendly sorcerer. 

Bearing in mind the fact already established in a pre- 
ceding chapter, that a subjective mental process expresses 
itself by evoking in consciousness such familiar visualised 
images as most adequately represent it in a personified 
form, we cannot be surprised to find that demons were in- 
variably visualised in the guise of one of those wild and 
noxious creatures whose threatening aspect always startle 
and frighten human beings. In every divine presentation, 
the individual caught the glint of an animated being which 
had the shape and other characteristics of some wild ani- 
mal. Especially was the serpent a fit representative of the 
demon. The serpent's habit was to lurk in or about ob- 
jects of which it might seem at one moment an integral 
part; then suddenly and unexpectedly it would rear itself 
out of the inanimate mass into a living form tense with 
malignant energy; and, on the instant, as the disturber of 


i6o THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

its peace recoiled in terror from the dangerous spot, it 
would as swiftly disappear. This was just the way the 
demon behaved; and thus it came to pass that the ser- 
pent-form became in many regions the favourite image in 
which the individual visualised the demon. This being 
the case, it followed that the semblance of animals, and 
especially that of the serpent, became the favourite guise 
of the Fetich. 

Now this use of the animal form to impersonate the 
deity had a necessary, but, at the same time, a remarkable 
consequence. It gave rise to the idea of a special kind of 
demon, which was invariably associated with the concep- 
tion of a genus, as distinct from that manifesting itself 
as part of the perception of a single object. For the ani- 
mal form is itself generic; it is not peculiar to any single 
animal, but belongs equally to the whole genus of that 
particular kind of creature. In his Fetich the individual 
worshipped the serpent-form — not any particular serpent. 
One particular serpent may have suggested the semblance 
with which he invested the Fetich; but having done so, he 
found that it equally well stood as the image of a very 
large number of serpents; and worshipping his Fetich he 
therefore worshipped a form that was generic. The reader 
will recognise in this conception the basis of that extra- 
ordinary system of belief and practice which we know as 
totem-worship. But the full development of totem-wor- 
ship belongs to a later period of the growth of the religious 
idea. In the first stage of this growth, with which we are 
at presenting dealing, the chief result of this conception 
was enormously to enhance the value of each wild animal 
as manifestants of the deity. Each wild animal was in 
itself one of those objects the perception of which was 
most highly calculated to produce a powerful impression 


FIRST STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 161 

on the Neo-andric ganglia. For it exhaled the superla- 
tive mystery of the living creature, whose existence con- 
stantly sets at naught the volition of the human being ; and 
this mystery was increased considerably by its habits of 
secretiveness, which rendered it difficult, if not impossible, 
for men to familiarise themselves with its appearance, as 
they could in the case of inanimate objects, or domestic 
animals. But beyond this, there was in every wild crea- 
ture the suggestion of the generic demon — a demon of 
obviously much larger dimensions, more powerful, more 
elusive, and more difficult to deal with — since it was not 
seriously affected by anything that could be done to any 
single representative of the class of animals with which it 
was associated. Thus all wild animals came to rank high 
in the hierarchy of the demon-world, and their worship 
won for itself a prominent part in the ritual of demon- 
ology. And those amongst them which were naturally 
most abhorrent and repulsive to human beings, necessarily 
attained to the highest honour; for as they most fitly repre- 
sented the wild demons, their semblances would have the 
greatest vogue as Fetiches. 

I have said enough to show that all the abhorrent and 
elusive mysteries of demonology are easily derived from 
the psychological situation resulting from the first stage in 
the development of a new mind-organ, as postulated in 
my theory. Without predicating anything further concern- 
ing mental physiology than what is matter of common 
agreement amongst all psychologists at the present day, 
we can see that the physiological conditions established 
by the appearance of a new layer of cortical ganglia in the 
human brain, rendered inevitable those beliefs and prac- 
tices. They were the inevitable results of the first stage 
in the growth of a new mind-organ, if the new mind-organ 


1 62 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


came into being in the manner postulated in this work; 
that is to say, as a mass of ganglia having an origin in the 
virginal element of the Germ-plasm separate from the pre- 
existing ganglia. 


CHAPTER IV 


PHYSICAL BASIS OF SECOND STAGE 

The reader who has followed me so far, and who has 
grasped all that has been said in the preceding chapters, 
will have no difficulty in understanding that in the next 
stage of development, the religious consciousness would 
reveal presentations to the individual of an entirely dif- 
ferent character from those of the first stage, which were 
bound to mitigate in some degree the terrors of the pre- 
ceding period. In their stronger and more developed 
state, the Neo-andric ganglia, when affected by a suffi- 
ciently powerful stimulus, — that is to say, by the percep- 
tion of an object or process in the outside world which was 
especially mysterious, — would necessarily respond by 
affording to the individual a glimpse of that paradise in 
consciousness which has already been accounted for; and 
in the ecstasy of the revelation he would visualise, in one 
supreme moment, the figure of a being more radiant than 
any demon, and actually engaged in suppressing the evil 
figures that thronged around him up to the very moment 
of his entrance into the portals so graciously opened to 
him. The demons were still there; indeed, on every occa- 
sion when a divine manifestation of the higher order was 
to take place, the first result was still the appearance of a 
demon; but if the circumstances were such that the men- 
tal process was to attain complete development, then in the 
midst of his agony, the individual suddenly became con- 
scious of a soothing influence which pervaded his whole 
being, quenched his transports of fear and fury, and, lift- 
163 


1 64 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

ing him up into a state of bliss such as he had never be- 
fore experienced, revealed to him an angelic figure that 
claimed his thanks and adoration. 

These good spirits did not appear so spontaneously and 
readily as the demons. They still manifested themselves 
as the result of the perception of natural objects and phe- 
nomena; but it was only those natural objects and phe- 
nomena that were specially mysterious, striking, or unfa- 
miliar, that were capable of evoking their presence; the 
generality of natural objects still remained as before 
solely haunted by the presence of demons. The celestial 
bodies, the sky, the earth, and the sea; mountains that 
stood out in fantastic shapes, or that constantly altered 
their configuration in shifting mists or clouds; trees, or 
groves of trees that stood up in grim contrast to their sur- 
roundings; rivers that fascinated one by their spontaneous 
life and movement, especially if the waters that fed them 
welled up with terrific force out of some mysterious chasm 
that was itself situated amidst surroundings of a striking 
character; all forms of life and all the inscrutable proc- 
esses of Nature — such were the things that most easily 
evoked the higher presentation. And the appearance of 
this higher presentation was always resisted by the lower; 
in other words, a demon always barred the path to com- 
munion with the good spirit, and this demon had to be 
suppressed before the good spirit would appear. Thus, 
instead of thronging on the individual every moment with- 
out being solicited, these good spirits were exceedingly 
difficult of access to the ordinary person. In a few of the 
most highly developed, the psychological conditions would 
be so favourable that the higher manifestation might 
reveal itself automatically. Those, naturally, would be- 
come the priests. In them the mental process would have 


SECOND STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 165 

sufficient energy to complete itself without any prepara- 
tion of the individual; and would, indeed, impel the lat- 
ter into that state which was most compatible with the 
highest possible psychic illumination of the Neo-andric 
ganglia. For the general multitude, however, the difficul- 
ties in the way of the process would be so great as to ren- 
der necessary the adoption of a special mode of behaviour, 
before the longed-for result could be obtained. They had 
to copy the attitude and the mode of behaviour which de- 
clared itself naturally in the most highly developed as the 
result of the mental process. And these exercises had to 
be frequently and regularly repeated, so as to induce in 
them a habit of mind favourable to the due fulfilment of 
the process. In these exercises the most highly developed 
were the teachers of the multitude; they taught them how 
the good spirits were to be worshipped in order that in- 
dividuals might obtain their protection. And as in them 
the whole process occurred spontaneously, and with all the 
energy of an overwhelming inspiration, it was in them and 
through them that it expressed and revealed itself. It was 
they who instituted the ritual of a form of worship which 
became the basis of all future forms of worship; they ex- 
pressed the higher religious sentiment of that period in 
those passionate Chaldean hymns which have been pre- 
served for us in the Royal Library of Nineveh, and which 
are so strangely akin in feeling to our own; and it was in 
their minds that grew those great myths — such as that of 
Osiris in Egypt, and that of Marduk in Babylon — which 
portrayed in the dramatic form, already accounted for as 
an essential feature of the subjective phase of conscious- 
ness, the very things that were happening in respect of 
those ganglia, the appearance of which had called into be- 
ing the supernatural world. Thus, from the first, the 


1 66 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


priests were a special class of men set apart from the com- 
mon multitude, whose natural function it was to teach, 
to express, and to portray in terms of the subjective mind, 
all that related to the religious consciousness. They were 
a special class because what was taking place was 
of the nature of an evolutionary development; an evolu- 
tionary development which affected large masses of indi- 
viduals, differing widely in inheritance and constitution, 
so that it could not attain to the same level of maturity 
in all. It is easy to see that only in a few, in the most 
highly developed, could it attain that supreme position in 
relation to the older organisation of the individual, neces- 
sary for revealing itself and the obligations which it im- 
posed on the individual, completely in consciousness. 
The common statement that the priest was in primitive 
times simply the father of every family, is one entirely 
devoid of truth. It originated at a period when very little 
was known of the earlier phases of the religious idea, and 
when no attention was given to the psychological signifi- 
cance of what little was known; and it has been slavishly 
copied ever since in every manual of Comparative Re- 
ligion. 

The reader will easily realise the difficulties which stood 
in the way of the individual’s endeavours to enter into the 
Presence that assured him the divine protection if he bears 
in mind the physiological antagonism of the two sets of 
mind-elements concerned in the evolutionary process which 
was going on. This physiological antagonism has already 
been referred to and explained; and it will have to be re- 
ferred to again and again, as it entirely dominates the 
psychological situation, and has imprinted itself on the 
pattern of every successive phase of the religious idea. 
Whatever stimulated the one set of mind-elements neces- 


SECOND STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 167 

sarily suppressed the other. Now, as I have already ex- 
plained, the first thing that was required of the indi- 
vidual was that he should concentrate his attention on the 
new presentations of the Neo-andric ganglia. But this 
was exceedingly difficult for him to do. Not only were 
the Neo-andric ganglia still very weak, but everything in 
his external life appealed to the Palaeogynic ganglia and 
tended to stimulate them into constant activity. What- 
ever he saw, whatever he heard, whatever he thought, had 
the fatal tendency of preventing him from fulfilling this 
first obligation; and the difficulty in this respect was still 
further increased by the habit of mind which had been 
induced in him by the first stage of the religious develop- 
ment. For as we have seen in that stage, what the re- 
ligious presentation revealed to him was the demon, which 
filled him with horror and fear, and which he had got into 
the habit of striving, by every means in his power, to 
obliterate. It is true he concentrated his attention on the 
fetich in trying to dodge the demon ; but the fetich was not 
a presentation of the Neo-andric ganglia, but one resulting 
solely from the activity of the Palaeogynic ganglia, by 
means of which he entirely obliterated the psychic activity 
of the former. So that he had acquired, through an evo- 
lutionary process, and a constant repetition of mental ex- 
ercises which had extended over a period of many hun- 
dreds of years, a habit of mind which naturally rendered 
almost impossible this concentration of his attention on 
the divine presentation. 

But the difficulty was still further increased by another 
circumstance which resulted from the physiological an- 
tagonism of the two sets of mind-elements. The Neo-an- 
dric ganglia could only receive their stimulation pri- 
marily through the Palaeogynic mind-elements, but the 


168 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

continued activity of the latter interfered with their 
activity; so that although it was, in the first instance, the 
perception of an object or process in the outside world 
which gave rise to the appearance of a good spirit, yet the 
continued perception of this external thing tended to blur 
the presentation and finally destroy it. Here the indi- 
vidual was faced, not only with a difficulty, but with a 
paradox which it was impossible for him to explain. He 
could not see the divine without the object, yet the con- 
tinued perception of the object prevented him from see- 
ing the divine. If he forced himself to carry out the first 
obligation imposed on him — that of concentrating his at- 
tention on the divine thing — then, since the appearance of 
the divine thing entirely depended on his consciousness of 
the external object, it was perfectly natural for him to 
concentrate his attention actually on the thing in the ex- 
ternal world that he recognised as the cause of the mani- 
festation that had taken place in him. But then what 
happened? As soon as he did that, he found that the 
good spirit tended to disappear, and to his horror and 
amazement, all his efforts to secure a prolonged or fre- 
quent communion with the good spirit ended in confront- 
ing him with a demon of the most savage aspect. 

In these circumstances, it is obvious that he would be 
impelled to change frequently the locality where he per- 
formed his act of worship; as he found, after worshipping 
in one place, one object or one group of objects, that the 
place lost its sanctity and no longer yielded to his efforts. 
He would naturally rise and go away somewhere else, and 
then he found that in the new surroundings, especially if 
these differed entirely from those to which he had been 
accustomed before, the same power returned to enter into 
communion with the divine spirit. But again the same 


SECOND STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 169 

untoward result would be sure to follow; the new place 
or objects would become so familiar to him that they 
would lose their power of evoking the divine presentation, 
and in response to the imperative need of visualising the 
good spirit he would have to start again on another quest 
for new surroundings. Thus arose that strange tendency 
to wandering away from one place to another that caused, 
in the earliest times, those great migrations of vast masses 
of human beings which have played so great a part in the 
history of human development, as well as the nomadic 
habit in general wherever it occurs. The disposition en- 
gendered was entirely of religious origin, and became one 
of the most important characteristics impressed on the in- 
dividual by the growth of the religious consciousness. Its 
importance in fulfilling one of the supreme necessities of 
the life of the Generic Organism will be dealt with in an- 
other chapter. 

Yet to the man who was sufficiently highly developed 
not to rest content until he could attain to a satisfying and 
permanent communion with the good spirits, the method 
of moving about was not wholly satisfactory, for even if 
he changed his habitation and the locality of his worship, 
yet the good attained only lasted for a short time; the 
object of worship became vulgarised and no longer was 
able to afford the ecstasy which he was in search of. 
Moreover, in those peoples who had inherited a highly 
civilised and therefore stationary habit of existence, the 
desire awakened by the religious consciousness in this re- 
spect would be resisted by very powerful forces. For each 
phase of the religious idea was the production of a sepa- 
rate Racial movement which in itself, as we have seen, 
tended to keep the masses of people whom it affected to- 
gether, and to render it imperative for them to adopt the 


170 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

united and collective form of existence. This influence, 
although overshadowed by the tremendous driving power 
possessed by the presentations in consciousness induced by 
the new growth, would go very far to reinforce and main- 
tain secure the inherited habit wherever the latter existed. 
So that, although a disposition was engendered for men to 
move away, either singly or in great swarms, from the 
great centres of civilisation, yet large numbers of the 
people would remain wedded to the older form of life, and 
would continue to live in stationary communities. For 
them, as well as for those of the most highly developed who 
adopted the nomadic life, something more was necessary to 
ensure them a satisfying and permanent communion with 
the good spirits than mere change of the object which could 
evoke the divine presentation. The individual had to 
accustom himself so to behave in the presence of the sacred 
object as not to destroy its powers of divine manifestation. 
He soon came to realise that it was necessary for him when 
he approached the sacred object to content himself with a 
hurried glimpse of it, and then to blot it entirely out of 
his vision; he had not to see it and not to think of it, and 
had even to forget its existence. This remarkable turning 
away from the very thing that he was adoring became an 
essential feature of the act of worship. But beyond that, 
of course, all the sacred objects that were to retain their 
power had to be treated with extraordinary reverence, and 
saved from the liability of being seen at every moment. 
For however capable an object might be to evoke the 
higher presentation, if it became vulgarised by frequent 
observation, it necessarily lost its higher stimulating power, 
and the individual then, instead of visualising an angel, 
was confronted every time by a demon. 

Of course, this naturally diminished the number of sa- 


SECOND STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 171 

cred objects very considerably, for all things that con- 
stantly entered into the view of men in their daily lives 
became, for this very reason, incapable of continuing their 
sacred function. A comparatively small number of 
things, of objects, and of places, had to be reserved from 
common use for divine purposes, and instead of the enor- 
mous number of demons which lurked in every particle of 
matter of any kind or form, the individual had to content 
himself with the protection of a very much reduced num- 
ber of good spirits. 

Finally, since the full psychic illumination of the Neo- 
andric ganglia necessitated the complete suppression of the 
psychic activity of the Palseogynic mind-organ, all his 
own objective activities, his thoughts, his tendencies, his 
consciousness of external objects, had to be obliterated be- 
fore the divine state could reveal itself in its complete ful- 
ness. He had to do nothing, to become entirely passive, 
and almost to cease to exist before he became fit for the 
companionship of the more radiant inhabitants of the 
supernatural world. Every activity on his own part at 
once blurred the divine vision and destroyed his ecstasy. 
Thus, in order that this companionship should be vouch- 
safed to him, he had to abase himself into that state 
of mind where a man despairs of his own efforts, feels 
himself powerless, and simply cries out to the Deity for 
salvation. If he were saved, it was not through any merit 
of his own, or any claim that he had on the divine beings, 
but simply because it was their nature to be compassion- 
ate and merciful; and in the act of worship it was neces- 
sary that his whole attitude should be one that confessed 
this faith and this sense of unworthiness. In the act of 
worship he crouched on his knees and elbows, with his 
forehead touching the ground; and in this attitude of ter- 


172 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

ror and self-abasement he appealed to the gods for help, 
and acknowledged that in their help lay his only chance 
of salvation. He was as yet too much under the influ- 
ence of the panic induced in him by the apparition of the 
demon to have any certainty of salvation; the protective 
gods might save him, but they were too weak for the pos- 
sibility to convert itself into an assurance. For the good 
spirits were not very much more powerful than the de- 
mons themselves; invariably beaten, the latter were yet 
always able to renew the conflict, or to rise up again and 
assault the individual when he was no longer protected. 
It was this miserable and pitiable state of mind that he 
expressed in his attitude of worship; and it was in this 
attitude that he was buried after death. 

Because of what has been said, the idea of the good 
spirit was a much more spiritual one than that of the de- 
mon — that is to say, whilst the demon seemed an integral 
part of the material which it haunted, the fact that the 
worshipper of the good spirit had to turn away from the 
object which awakened in him the divine manifestation, 
naturally separated the good spirit in his imagination from 
the object itself. That they were intimately connected 
always remained a fact; but the good spirit was naturally 
conceived to exist separately from the object and might 
move away from it. So that when the good spirit was 
worshipped, it was always in a locality or near the objects 
which evoked the divine manifestation; but it was wor- 
shipped separately from them in the form of an idol which 
was a representation in material form of the figure in 
which the individual visualised the good spirit. Of course, 
the idea of the idol would naturally be suggested to the 
individual in the first place by the fetich. Just as in the 
earlier stage, the individual made himself a fetich in 


SECOND STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 173 

order to save himself from the horrors with which 
he was threatened by the perception of a mysterious 
object, so in this next stage it was natural for him to 
repeat the same process, and attempt by the same means 
to prevent the triumph of the demon. He therefore made 
himself an artificial representation of the form in which 
he visualised the good spirit, and he found that if he trans- 
ferred to this image the feelings and the worship due to 
the good spirit and placed it in the neighbourhood of the 
sacred object, or so fashioned it that it could awake in his 
mind its memory, then he attained what he desired and 
secured the revelation of the good spirit far more certainly 
and more readily than if he devoted his attention actually 
to the natural thing itself. 

To us, looking at the matter from a psychological point 
of view, it is quite evident that the mental processes in- 
volved in the two stages are absolutely different from each 
other, and that the fetich was really antagonistic to the 
good spirit. In the first stage, the results were obtained 
by excessively stimulating the old Palseogynic mind-ele- 
ments, and securing the attrition of the Neo-andric ganglia. 
In this second stage, the process was just the reverse, con- 
sisting of an excessive stimulation and preservation of the 
Neo-andric ganglia and the suppression of the Palseogynic 
elements. So that it would seem to us that what the indi- 
vidual should have done to ensure communion with the 
good spirits was to abandon altogether all the objects and 
all the modes of behaviour which were associated with the 
worship of the fetich. For as all these objects and prac- 
tices stimulated the Palseogynic elements and tended to 
maintain them predominant in consciousness, they neces- 
sarily tended to render ineffective the stimulation of the 
Neo-andric ganglia. But it took a long time before the 


174 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

individual realised this antagonism. Throughout the 
whole growth of the religious idea in its Oriental phase of 
development, fetich-worship and its associated practices of 
witchcraft bulked very largely in every religious system; 
and it is only when we get to Judaism that we find this 
truth clearly expressed, and every vestige of fetich worship 
and witchcraft absolutely tabooed. Nor is it difficult to 
see why this was so. For, after all, in the first stage the 
individual, when assailed by the demon, found relief by 
worshipping the fetich. In the next stage he again found 
relief; this was as yet the chief quality of the presentation. 
And as at this early stage the character of the higher divine 
presentation resulting from the stimulation of the Neo- 
andric ganglia was still so limited, so devoid of any other 
quality than that which gave relief, it is not to be won- 
dered at that the fetich became confounded with the an- 
gelic being. We should therefore expect the worship of 
the fetich to persist throughout the second stage, and all 
fetiches to be actually worshipped as good spirits. There 
is no doubt that this confounding of two things so essen- 
tially different and antagonistic did actually occur. It is 
because of this that we find in the Old Testament in one 
place the serpent figuring as the embodiment of all the 
powers of evil, full of hatred of humanity and bent on 
bringing about its destruction; in another place a fetich in 
the form of a brazen serpent figures as a good spirit, on the 
adoration of which is dependent the salvation of the Isra- 
elites. 

Thus the protective beings revealed to the indi- 
vidual by the religious consciousness in the second stage 
were most appropriately visualised in the animal form 
which belonged to the most powerful fetich gods; and 
though some of these animals were friendly or useful to 


SECOND STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 175 

man, yet hideous and repulsive forms might still continue 
to be adored and venerated. The individual thought too 
meanly of himself to represent the gods in human form; 
it is not till the next stage that we find the human form 
beginning to be used for this purpose. And as the fetich 
gods were insofar identified with the good spirits, all the 
practices used in the worship of the former were carried 
on, more or less modified, into the second stage. Thus 
the practice of killing and eating living things, which 
played so important a part in the ritual of demon worship, 
became a very prominent feature in the worship of the 
good spirits — only in this second stage it was no longer hu- 
man beings that were the sacrificial victims, but animals; 
for a reason that will appear presently. And when we re- 
member that every time the good spirit manifested itself, 
its appearance was heralded by the turmoil into which the 
individual was always thrown by the approach of the de- 
mon, we can quite easily understand that the act by which 
the individual evoked the presence of the good spirit was 
often only a modification of the devil-dance employed in the 
worship of the fetich. It was a devil-dance modified by the 
influences that tended to suppress the activity of the 
Palseogynic mind-elements. Thus at first in the act of 
worship, the individual would necessarily behave just as 
he behaved in a devil-dance, but as the influence of the 
higher presentation made itself felt, his movements and his 
shouts would become suppressed; the harsh, clanging 
rhythm which was so essential a feature of a devil-dance 
would greatly lose its intensity until it dwindled away into 
a soft accompaniment, and the individual, instead of hav- 
ing his attention fixed on the object, would gradually lose 
consciousness of it, so that he would become in a manner 
oblivious of his surroundings and drift gradually into a 


176 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

dreamy subjective state. His furious and panic-stricken 
sounds and movements would gradually lose their vehe- 
mence until he glided about with gentle swayings, and 
gave utterance to sounds subdued and pathetic, which 
voiced no longer his terror and his hate, but his hopes and 
his appeals for compassion. In songs and dances which 
were punctuated by the accompaniment of a soft and cease- 
less rhythm, he gradually glided into a state of subjective 
consciousness, in the midst of which the revelation ap- 
peared. 

I want the reader above everything to bear in mind the 
fact that these gods of the second stage were very difficult 
to evoke. Instead of thronging on the individual every 
moment without solicitation like the demons, they could 
only be made to appear through assiduous worship, prayer, 
and sacrifice. These acts on the part of the individual 
were absolutely necessary to render possible the apparition, 
and to endow it with sufficient strength to overwhelm the 
malignant influence. Not only the power of these protec- 
tive spirits, but their very existence also, appeared to be 
dependent on certain acts and a certain attitude on the 
part of the individual. It is of immense importance to 
appreciate this fact, for in this relationship lies the germ 
of the whole theory of the efficacy of worship, prayer, and 
sacrifice which constitutes the most essential, the most 
permanent, the most significant element in pagan religious 
philosophy. The pagan gods were one and all, whether 
they belonged to this early stage or whether they belonged 
to that highest stage which expresses itself in Brahminism, 
deities whose very existence as well as their power depended 
on the worship, the prayers, and the sacrifices offered to 
them by men. 

I have said that the actual mode of worship would only 


SECOND STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 177 

be a modified and subdued form of the devil-dance, but it 
is obvious that because of this modification, and the sup- 
pression of what was terrible and violent in the devil- 
dance, the feelings evoked in the devil-dance no longer 
appeared in the worship of the good spirits. Instead of 
the rising fury and homicidal impulses which the earlier 
devil-dance engendered, all tendencies to such a state of 
mind were rapidly arrested by the new influences that 
surged up and took possession of the individual as he 
drifted into the subjective state of consciousness in which 
the good spirit revealed itself to him. His self-abase- 
ment necessarily attenuated to the vanishing point any 
feelings of anger and resentment with which he might have 
entered into the act of worship; it would make him prone 
to recognise the justice of any oppression or hostility to 
which he might have been subjected; and if he thought of 
his fellow-creatures at all, he could only regard them with 
those feelings of compassion and mercy, of the need of 
which he was so supremely conscious himself. Thus in 
the worship of the good spirit, all the horrible practices 
which originated in the earlier stage of the development 
were altogether out of place and were entirely abandoned. 
Cannibalism, in particular, was tabooed. But this brings 
us to another most remarkable consequence of the psycho- 
logical situation, which requires separate notice. 

The worship of ancestors is universally recognised as 
one of the earliest stages of religion, and is so prevalent 
among all primitive and savage peoples that it has been 
regarded by many as the starting point of the whole fabric 
of religious belief. It is a natural consequence of the 
psychological situation in the second stage of the develop- 
ment of the religious idea, and it was because of this 
worship that cannibalism in particular of all the savage 


178 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

rites inculcated by fetich-worship, came to be regarded 
as a specially abhorrent practice. 

We have seen that in this stage of the Generic Growth, 
every mysterious object in the external world was capable 
of awakening in the individual the sense of a god-like 
presence. Every man, then, awakened in him this sense, 
so that he recognised him as possessed by a divine being. 

But we have also seen that, although an object was in 
every case the original cause of the stimulation of the Neo- 
andric ganglia which produced in consciousness this sense 
of the divine, yet its continued presence — particularly if it 
were capable of holding the attention fixed on itself — inter- 
fered with the fulness and brilliancy of the psychic illu- 
mination. In order to obtain the highest degree of the 
latter it was necessary that the senses should be sealed at 
once after the necessary stimulation had been received, or 
that the object should be removed from observation. 
Familiarity with that which was originally the cause of his 
divine feeling dimmed the latter and made it scarcely ap- 
parent in consciousness. Thus every man was divine; but 
the divinity of a person who was seldom or never seen, but 
whose greatness made him much talked about, as a great 
priest or a king, was necessarily of a much more brilliant 
character than that of a relative or even a fellow towns- 
man. 

But after death, exactly the reverse was the case. Then 
the divinity of those with whom the individual had been 
most familiar, became at once the most brilliant. The 
living entity had vanished, so that even before burial the 
object with which he had been familiar had been removed, 
or had at least lost all power, and that for ever, of holding 
his attention fixed on itself. But because it had been so 
familiar, it left behind it a mental image of such latent 


SECOND STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 179 

energy that the slightest suggestion sufficed to cause it to 
become reformed in consciousness, this time shining 
brightly in the unadulterated light of a divine image. 
And also because it had been for so long so familiar, there 
would scarcely be an object in the vicinity of the indi- 
vidual that would not serve, by the association of ideas, 
to recall into consciousness the mental image of the de- 
parted one in the transcendent glory with which it was 
now invested. The one most familiar with, the one most 
associated with, the one most dependent on the departed 
during life would, after death, be the one in whom this 
transcendent glory of divinity would manifest itself most 
brilliantly. And because of this depth and fixity of im- 
pression, and because of its constant liability to resuscita- 
tion under circumstances the most favourable to divine 
illumination, therefore this glory of divinity would far out- 
shine that emitted by the perception or memory of any 
other object. 

In other words, the worship of parents after death be- 
came for the individual the most efficacious means of en- 
tering that paradise in consciousness which it had become 
possible for him to attain to. 

But if he failed in this worship, he was visited with the 
direst penalties. The death demon, as I have said, was 
necessarily the most appalling of all the evil spirits. The 
reader will easily understand that to the individual 
capable of realising the vivid and eternal glories of the 
paradise in consciousness which the Generic Growth had 
produced, there could not exist a more appalling fact in 
the whole category of things, than the realisation of death. 
If realisation of existence is the very joy of life, then must 
realisation of non-existence necessarily assume in conscious- 
ness the aspect of everything that is most horrible. And 


180 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

the individual had become capable of realising this horror 
in all the vast dimensions of a creation of the subjective 
mind as an abstract thing, even when it did not exist for 
him as an objective reality, even when his own existence 
was not in the least threatened. The simple perception or 
memory of the phenomenon of death in another was quite 
sufficient to stab him to the quick, and lay him low in the 
spiritual agony of despair; a despair which had no limits, 
either in Space or in Time. For it was the expression of 
the prostration of the subjective mind; and in the subjec- 
tive form of mentation, as we have seen, every idea is all- 
embracing and eternal, limited in Time and Space only by 
the intensity of feeling. 

The reader who has followed me so far will see that 
there was only one way in which the individual could es- 
cape or mitigate this horror. It was not the slightest use 
for him to try and forget the black fact which occasioned 
his misery, by devoting himself to the consideration of 
brighter things ; for things refused to appear bright, and 
his ineffectual attempts in that direction could only tend to 
increase his general sense of incapacity and confusion. 
Nor could he lose his burden even were he to separate him- 
self by a thousand leagues from the scenes that were asso- 
ciated with the horror; for he carried about with him a 
mental image of the phenomenon which refused to be de- 
leted, and the horror of it enthralled him. The more he 
strove to prevent his thoughts from dwelling on the 
memory of the departed one, the more pitiful and frenzied 
became his condition. But if, on the contrary, he dwelt 
on this memory and cherished it in reverend fashion, then 
— provided he had hitherto paid due attention to the wor- 
ship of the gods, and accorded to his parent that respect 
and veneration which was due to the divine element in 


SECOND STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 181 

him — he found that a singular thing happened. Instead 
of his condition becoming worse, it suddenly began to get 
better. His frenzy quieted down, his hopefulness returned, 
his agony changed to a sweet ecstasy, and his energies be- 
came revivified. If he went still further and devoted him- 
self with ardour to the worship of that memory, then he 
found that these results became intensified, until, finally 
every element of horror was eliminated from consciousness. 
This was necessarily so, because the more he worshipped 
that memory, the more perfect became the psychic illu- 
mination of the Neo-andric ganglia. The image of the 
departed one, which first appeared to him in this higher 
consciousness shrouded in gloom and sadness, sustained 
amidst the prostration of the nervous elements only by 
efforts that stabbed him with agony, gradually gained in 
strength and brilliancy, radiating in all directions its 
awakening energies; until finally in the full semblance of 
a deity it opened once more to him the gates of paradise, 
and he became again a confident being, full of hope and 
capacity for action. For in this paradise of consciousness, 
full realisation of existence returned to him, and the 
eternity of the present became a certitude, and dissolved 
the phenomenon of death into a spectral shadow of no 
substance. There could be no death for him, so soon as 
he identified his own existence with the eternal life of the 
Generic Organism. 

Is it at all to be wondered at that in these circumstances 
the individual should have come to look upon the worship 
of his ancestor as one of the most necessary obligations of 
his existence*? On the contrary, he would have been a 
fool if he had not willingly submitted to the obligation. 
And so ancestors came to hold from the very earliest times 
a prominent position amongst the great gods of the re- 


1 82 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


ligious world, towering above the common level of the in- 
numerable deities that the Animistic conception of Nature 
had created. Ancestors, in fact, were amongst the first of 
the great gods. Long before Bel and Brahma had temples 
erected in their honour, men built great temple-tombs to 
their ancestors, and in them surrendered themselves to the 
ecstasies of the new presentations that were appearing in 
consciousness. ’Whatever the relations between father and 
son during life, the attitude of the latter after death at 
once became that of a pious devotee, simply through the 
physiological mechanism of his mind-organ. The cult of 
the dead in general would be more or less universal, but 
of this cult the son would necessarily be the high-priest; 
and, each memory with all its associations being handed 
down to succeeding generations, it would finally come to 
affect a long line of ancestors, fading away to the fur- 
thest limits of possible remembrance. 

But further, it is easy enough to see that these ideas as- 
sociated with the phenomenon of death would inevitably 
develop themselves into the conception of a continued 
existence after death. The individual was already be- 
coming dimly conscious of a sense of eternity through 
the growth of the Neo-andric ganglia. As I have al- 
ready said, in the subjective phase of consciousness, every 
idea is all-embracing and eternal, limited in Time and 
Space only by the intensity of its feeling. This was so be- 
cause, in the subjective phase, mental processes are entirely 
independent of the factors that determine their extension 
in regard to Time and Space in the objective phase. In the 
latter, as the intelligence is directly in communion with the 
phenomena of the outside world, and has impressed on it 
their pattern, it follows that all its operations are governed 
by ideas of Time and Space which result from the observa- 


SECOND STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 183 

tion of the succession of events and the distribution of ob- 
jects in the outside world. But in the subjective phase of 
consciousness, the mind is necessarily entirely free from any 
such limitations; it refuses to have this order impressed on 
its operations ; and the only limitations that exist for it are 
those determined by the contained energy of the idea, or, 
as we might say, by its intensity of feeling. But the in- 
tensity of feeling of an idea emitted by the Neo-andric 
ganglia was not only far greater than that of a Palseogynic 
mental process; it was also eternal in comparison with the 
latter. For as we have seen, the Neo-andric ganglia were 
of the very substance of the Generic Organism, the life of 
which is eternal as compared with that of the individual. 
Thus, whilst the feelings attending every Palseogynic con- 
ception were of comparatively short duration — being frac- 
tions of the consciousness of a mind-organ wound up, so to 
say, in unison with the physiological life of the body — the 
ecstatic moods which now appeared in the individual were 
similar fractions of the consciousness of a mind-organ whose 
life was independent of, and eternal in comparison with, 
that of the body. So that, whenever the Neo-andric ganglia 
were stimulated, they never failed to flood the whole of 
consciousness with a sense of eternity. Of course, at this 
period, when the Neo-andric ganglia were still so weak that 
they could only triumph in consciousness with great diffi- 
culty, and then only for a few moments at a time, they 
could not endow the individual with that complete and per- 
manent assurance of immortality which puffed him up to 
such an extraordinary degree at the next step of the de- 
velopment, that men actually lost the power of realising 
that it was inevitable that they should die, and always at- 
tributed the recurrent fact to accident, or to the malevolence 
of some demon. In this stage, men had only realised the 


184 the significance of ancient religions 

existence of an eternal life; they were still painfully aware 
that it was not a natural condition for them, and that they 
were unworthy of it; but they had reason to believe that 
under certain special circumstances, especially if they were 
successful in awakening the compassion of the good spirits, 
they might be allowed to participate in it. 

This being so, it was natural and inevitable that the pre- 
sentations in consciousness aroused in them by the phe- 
nomena of death, should actually transform themselves into 
a conception of what happened to the person who was dead. 
As the result of the presentation awakened in them by the 
perception of an object, they visualised a supernatural being 
which they identified with the object itself — in the first stage 
integrally and materially, in the second stage spiritually; so 
in this matter they naturally identified the presentation 
awakened in them with the object which had aroused it. 
The subjective presentations, wholly imaginary, and really 
only signalising what was taking place in the mind-ele- 
ments, were projected into the outside world; and the in- 
dividual was convinced that they signalised real facts and 
events, not in himself, but in the world outside himself. 
In other words, instead of the living individual realising 
that it was he himself that was undergoing the horror after 
death, the judgment, and the subsequent restoration to 
life and happiness, he imagined that it was the dead body 
that underwent these experiences. He came to believe 
that that body passed through a preliminary stage of dismal 
journeying through regions beset with horrors, on its way 
to the judgment-seat of the gods, thereafter to be dealt with 
according to the verdict passed upon the sum-total of its 
actions during life, either to be restored to a bliss that 
was to be everlasting, or to be delivered to torture that 
was to be never-ending. But especially was it necessary 


SECOND STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 185 

that the remains of the dead one should be buried; for as 
in the earlier phase of the situation the living individual 
found that a complete detachment from external things 
in the attitude of worship had to precede his passage from 
the horror of death to the renewed joy of the realisation 
of existence, so he conceived that it was necessary for the 
body first to be separated from contact with other things 
and secreted away from observation, before it could begin 
its journeyings that were to end with the restoration of 
life. Hence burial became of the utmost importance; but 
now it was an act performed wholly in the interests of the 
dead parent, and not of the living son; it was not for the 
relief of the latter from an offensive presentment of the 
phenomenon of death, but in order to allow the former 
to begin the pilgrimage that was to revive his drooped ex- 
istence. The utterly helpless and prostrate condition 
which was one of the first effects on the mind of the real- 
isation of the horror of death now affected the state of the 
dead person, and made him incapable of pleading his cause 
before the judging deities, or of defending himself from 
those who, being by nature malignant, strove to do him 
harm. He was utterly dependent at this most critical time 
on the endeavours of his son in these respects ; the son, be- 
ing alive, could still plead with the gods ; he could influence 
them effectually in various ways, and he could thwart 
those of malignant nature to a greater or less extent by the 
compelling power of wizardry, which the dead one could 
no longer exercise. Hence the worship, or performance 
of the funeral rites by the son was of the highest impor- 
tance and absolutely necessary for the restoration of the 
parent to life and happiness; it became indeed an act per- 
formed in the interests wholly of the dead; the son no 
longer performed it for his own relief, but in order to en- 


1 86 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

sure to his parent a speedy release from the horror of death. 

Following up the bearings of the ideas that became asso- 
ciated with the phenomenon of death, it will easily be seen 
that they could not fail to impose on the individual certain 
obligations which must needs introduce a new and power- 
ful element in the ethical standard according to which he 
governed his daily life. From what I have said in the 
preceding paragraphs, it follows that the individual’s power 
of saving himself from the horror of death would depend, 
to a very large extent, on his previous behaviour before it 
presented itself to him. The worship of the parent created 
the best possible conditions for the Neo-andric ganglia to 
become paramount in consciousness; but if the individual 
had previously never properly attended to the development 
of the Neo-andric ganglia by the worship of the gods; and 
if he had not, by a constant reverential attitude towards 
the parent so prepared the nervous tissue concerned, that 
the deification was an easy matter, through elimination of 
resistance in the process that transmitted the energy of the 
perception to the deifying ganglion; then, of course, the 
worship of the departed one would fail in producing the 
best results. For in that case, the important physiological 
elements of the situation would not have been adequately 
prepared to respond immediately and effectually to the ex- 
igences of the moment, even though the individual then 
did all that was right in the matter of worship. 

In other words, the salvation of the individual from the 
horror of death was largely determined by the sum total 
of his actions up to that moment. His future state de- 
pended on the balance between that which — in this sum 
total — lay to his credit, and that which lay to his discredit. 
The ethical basis of the judgment was that established 
by the actual psycho-physiological situation; whatever he 


SECOND STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 187 

had done that might in any way encourage the psychic 
illumination of the Neo-andric ganglia lay to his credit, 
and whatever he had done that might in any way interfere 
with it lay to his discredit. If he had constantly attended 
to the worship of the gods, and incessantly cultivated a 
reverential attitude towards the parent, then the release 
from his agony was swift, and he was forthwith lifted in 
an ecstasy of feeling, intelligence, and power, to the level 
of the gods, and honoured accordingly by other men. But 
if he had neglected these principal duties in the satisfaction 
of other inclinations — then he found that, at this crisis, 
the horror of the situation overwhelmed him; so that, in 
the utter degradation and incapacity produced by the frenzy 
of despair, he became to all men an object of repulsion, 
and regarded by them as one marked with the brand of 
those who are burning in the fire that is kindled by the 
everlasting vengeance of the gods. His life was hence- 
forth a never-ending torture. 

On the other hand, the father’s fate was so equally de- 
pendent on his son, that certain obligations were thereby 
imposed on him with regard to the care and training of his 
son that he could not neglect without rendering himself 
liable to the severest penalty after death. For as we have 
seen, the salvation of the parent after death was entirely 
dependent on the ministrations of the son. The full real- 
isation of the joys of paradise were not for him who had 
no son; but for him who, being a father, neglected that 
example and precept which was necessary for the train- 
ing of the son into the mental state which offered the least 
resistance to the psychic illumination of the Neo-andric 
ganglia, that paradise was soon rendered desolate in the 
present, and became impossible of attainment in the future 
life. If the son was responsible for the father, the father 


188 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


was not less responsible for the condition of the son. The 
same responsibilities, the same interests, both material and 
spiritual, bound the two together, and there was created 
between them that bond which we have come to look upon 
as natural, if not to all human beings, at any rate to all 
those who belong to our genus; a bond that came to be 
much stronger in ancient times than it is to-day and pro- 
duced, in those times, some most remarkable modifications 
in the structure of human society. 

Now to return to the matter of cannibalism. After 
what has been said above, it requires very little to explain 
how this practice came to be especially abhorrent to the 
individual in this stage of the religious development. It 
is obvious that as soon as the dead person became an ob- 
ject of worship — and, moreover, an object the worship of 
which enabled the individual most easily to enter into the 
joys of paradise — it would become a criminal act to 
look upon the body as a thing to be eaten; for the 
whole object of this eating of the dead body as I ex- 
plained in the last chapter, was to vulgarise the fact of 
death and to destroy all that was mysterious about it. 
Now in the second stage of the religious development, 
the individual was impelled to treat the dead object with 
the utmost reverence, and to avoid any act which might 
diminish the sense of mystery with which it enveloped him. 

In the same way became established that central law 
of totem worship which taboos the killing and eating of 
certain animals which are regarded as guardian angels. I 
have explained that, in this stage, all fetiches might be 
confounded with the good spirits, and in the preceding 
chapter I pointed out that every animal fetich represented 
a class of animals. Thus the worship of the fetich, as a 
divinity belonging to the second stage of the development, 


SECOND STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 189 

invested the whole of a class of living things with a char- 
acter which rendered the killing, and especially the eating, 
of any one of them almost as horrible a practice as that 
of cannibalism. Whilst in the first stage the killing and 
eating of any living creature was obviously the best way 
in which the individual could overcome and annihilate 
everything that was so mysterious in that creature as to 
produce a manifestation of the demon; in the second stage 
it was absolutely necessary for the individual to preserve 
all that was mysterious about the class of things repre- 
sented by the fetich, and to avoid doing anything to vul- 
garise the conception in his mind. 

Enough has been said to show that the fundamental forms 
of all the beliefs and practices that came into being as 
the result of the second stage of the development of the 
pagan religious consciousness are easily derived from the 
psychological situation postulated in my theory. 


CHAPTER V 


PHYSICAL BASIS OF THIRD STAGE 

It was in the second stage of the development that the 
myth was first used as a means of expressing the intuitive 
sense in the individual of what was happening to him, and 
the religious consciousness of this period was embodied es- 
pecially in two beautifully delineated myths — that of 
Marduk in Babylon and that of Osiris in Egypt, which 
have descended to us from those early times and are well- 
known at the present day. A brief notice of them will 
be appropriate before we pass on to the next stage of the 
religious development; for not only do they confirm the 
conception of the second stage which was described in the 
last chapter, but it will be easy to illustrate, by reference 
to them, the real meaning of the myth. 

There is no doubt that the wrong interpretation of the 
mythological representations of the religious idea in its 
Oriental phase of development has done much to obscure 
the whole subject, and to prevent the whole progression 
from appearing in its right perspective. The ordinary 
interpretation is this — that man, in his earliest condition, 
was absolutely incapable of observing anything that took 
place outside of himself; when his mind had developed 
sufficiently for him to begin to take notice of such things, 
then, in his bewilderment and in his efforts to express what 
he saw, he talked about these things in a mythological way; 
he personified these things; conceived them as beings di- 
rected by a Will similar to his own, and expressed all their 
relations as if they were the relations of individuals like 

190 


THIRD STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 191 

himself. Thus, according to this point of view, the myth 
is simply an explanation or expression, in such terms as 
the imperfect intelligence of man would be most likely 
to invent at its first contact with Nature, of some condition 
or process in the outside world. 

This conception is absurd. In the first place, the 
hypothesis of the first contact of the human intelligence 
with Nature is one which is based on absolutely no founda- 
tion, and which we have very sound reasons for rejecting. 
It is certain that human beings had attained to a very high 
degree of civilisation, and had acquired a very considerable 
grasp over the forces and materials of Nature before the re- 
ligious idea commenced its development, and therefore be- 
fore they got into the way of expressing themselves in a 
mythological manner. In face of this knowledge, the con- 
ception that men first began to think and to express them- 
selves in a mythological manner, because they were abso- 
lutely ignorant of the true nature and relations of objects 
in the outside world, and so expressed these relations in 
terms of their own wills and tendencies, is absolutely un- 
tenable. And, in the second place, the real explanation of 
these mythological representations at once suggests itself 
the moment we look at the matter from the psychological 
point of view, which is, after all, the only point of view 
which can reveal to us the truth. I have shown, in a pre- 
ceding chapter, that in the dream-process we have con- 
stantly presented to us indications of how the mind ex- 
presses itself in the subjective phase of consciousness. 
We have seen that the representation in consciousness is 
always a dramatic grouping and movement of figures which 
are drawn from the storehouse of images deposited in the 
objective mind-organ, and selected because they are 
capable of participating in the dramatic movement of the 


192 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

representation. In other words, we know that the mind, 
in its subjective state, always expresses itself and its con- 
dition in terms of the objective mind. This being so, the 
explanation of the myth is a perfectly easy one. As the 
result of the new growth of ganglia, a subjective phase of 
consciousness was gradually becoming dominant in the in- 
dividual, and concentrating his attention on the presenta- 
tions which it evoked in his consciousness. In this sub- 
jective phase of consciousness, the mind was utterly in- 
different to the real facts of nature, and instead of caus- 
ing the individual to spend his time thinking of these ex- 
ternal processes, it would necessarily draw him right away 
from them, and cause him to think about them less than he 
had ever done before. But it used these facts and processes 
of the external world to represent in consciousness its 
own condition, and as these things already presented them- 
selves to the observation of the individual as personified 
conceptions, the dramatic presentation finally evolved, as 
soon as the new ganglia were strong enough to allow of 
this further development of the mental process, would 
necessarily be that of the gods, who were the personified 
conceptions of these external facts and processes. For 
example, as I have said before, in the first stage of the 
religious development the perception of every mysterious 
object evoked in the individual the presentation of a demon. 
Anything which tended to prevent him from clearly ob- 
serving the object in question tended to increase the energy 
of the presentation. In darkness, therefore, the demons 
were especially malignant and numerous, and thus dark- 
ness was, in these early times, a horrible thing that spawned 
forth innumerable broods of the vilest denizens of the 
demon world. In the second stage of the religious devel- 
opment, therefore, anything which dispelled darkness would 


THIRD STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 193 

be very fit to symbolise the good spirit. We know that 
fire, for example, came to be regarded as possessing 
a specially sacred character; and it was because of this 
that, in this second stage, when corpses were buried, they 
were often partially burned in the process of exorcising 
the death demons by means of fire. Thus it is easy to see 
that, in this second stage, the rising of the sun would come 
to possess a special significance, because it was a process 
eminently fitted to symbolise what was actually taking place 
in the individual as the result of the new development. 
It was not the character of the sun, that we now attrib- 
ute to it as the source of all terrestrial energy, which fixed 
the attention of the individual at those times; but simply 
the fact that the rising sun invariably dispelled the dark- 
ness of the night. The sun was therefore eminently fitted 
by the part which it plays in this great process of Nature 
to become the type and representative of the world of 
good spirits, whose powers in consciousness created that 
radiant psychic illumination which dispelled the hideous 
brood of demons evoked in the first instance by every stim- 
ulation of the Neo-andric ganglia. Thus arose one great 
myth of the earliest times, in which was embodied the re- 
ligious consciousness of the period. In this myth, best 
preserved in its old Chaldean form, a dramatic repre- 
sentation is given of a struggle between the young sun- 
god and a female dragon — who was constantly giving birth 
to hideous offensive creatures — which culminates in the final 
triumph of the former. 

In Babylonia, the subsequent developments of the re- 
ligious idea brought about a considerable attenuation of 
all the earlier beliefs concerning a future life, and thus 
very much lessened the importance of those myths in which 
the feelings concerning this life are expressed. Thus the 


194 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

myth of Marduk and Tiamat mentioned above, has no ref- 
erence to a future life, but simply presents the continual 
struggle of the good spirit with the evil spirit, and is the 
one which has survived in the Babylonian records as the 
most important embodiment of the religious consciousness 
of the second stage. But in Egypt the case was different. 
The myth of Osiris, in which the earliest religious conscious- 
ness of Egypt has revealed itself in its most permanent 
form, symbolises also the struggle between the good and 
the evil spirits, but it expresses this struggle in a much 
deeper sense, in a sense that appealed especially to the 
early Egyptian by illustrating the final effects of this 
struggle after the death of the individual. As the third 
stage of the development of the religious idea was one 
almost entirely filled with the consciousness of eternal life, 
and no further developments of the religious idea in Egypt 
were sufficiently strong to obliterate this character, this 
myth survived as the sole representative of the religious 
feeling of that second stage in Egypt. We know, of course, 
that Osiris was recognised and worshipped as the god of 
the under-world in pre-dynastic times, as there is actually 
extant a tablet of that period on which that worship is 
depicted; so that we are certain that Osiris was originally 
a creation of that earlier period when the evil spirits were 
still strong enough to have some success in their struggle 
with the good spirits. The myth is beautifully delineated 
and perfectly verifies my conception of the nature of the 
myth. 

Now in the first place let us clearly understand what 
it was that the Egyptians had to express. In consequence 
of the physiological antagonism between the two sets of 
mind-elements concerned in the process of evolution that 
was going on, there was a continuous conflict betwixt them ; 


THIRD STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 195 

and in this stage they were still so equipoised in their rela- 
tive powers that the conflict only culminated in the triumph 
of the Neo-andric ganglia after a protracted resistance, in 
which the latter had not always the best of it. And 
though, in general, the conflict was ended by the complete 
triumph of the Neo-andric ganglia, yet in face of the phe- 
nomenon of death there was, on the other hand, for a time 
a complete defeat and even extinction of the psychic ac- 
tivity of these ganglia. The horror evoked by the phe- 
nomenon of death was so great that for a time the higher 
imagination was completely paralysed in the individual, 
and this left him entirely a prey to the triumphant death 
demon. For a moment the good spirit was dead, killed 
by the demon and treated by it in the way that demons 
dealt with those whom they killed. But the process did 
not end here. The individual found that this terrible 
phenomenon, which for the moment so paralysed and pros- 
trated him, actually led him to the realisation of another 
state of existence; and the point that is especially to be 
borne in mind in this sequence of events is, that this real- 
isation of a future life was actually caused by the phe- 
nomenon of death. The individual never had this real- 
ias tion except when confronted with the phenomenon of 
death. It was only in the midst of the horror that over- 
whelmed him at the sight or thought of a dead man that 
it came to him. In this realisation, the good spirit again 
revealed itself to him as the god who took compassion on 
the dead man, and introduced him to that new life, which 
his own sufferings and death had created. 

Now this is a very complicated sequence of events to 
illustrate in a mythological manner, for there are very few 
processes or facts in Nature which adequately symbolise 
it. It was not merely the fact q £ a living state following 


i 9 6 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


death that had to be portrayed, but the actual causation 
of a state of life by death. There are many phenomena 
in Nature which illustrate the first sequence, but they mostly 
fail to illustrate the further difficulty which is involved in 
the conception of a future life which is actually caused 
by the phenomenon of death. Thus the dying away of all 
vegetation is followed in ffie natural course of the seasons 
by another period of vigorous life and reproduction. 
But in this natural process, which has been held by so 
many to have afforded the germ of that conception of a 
future life possessed by the Archaic world, although there 
occurs a sequence wherein death occurs before life ap- 
pears, yet this sequence does not adequately symbolise the 
chief feature of the sequence of events, which the Egyptians 
of the second stage had in mind. In the succession of 
the seasons it is not death of the vegetation which is the 
actual cause of the new life which appears again at a later 
period; it is not so as a fact, nor does it impress the 
imagination in that way. In their efforts to signalise this 
deeper significance of the divine presentation which it was 
so difficult to express adequately, the Egyptians came to 
regard with special veneration many objects and especially 
many living things which, although of very slight intrinsic 
importance, yet were capable, because of their circumstances 
or their histories, of embodying some parts of the idea. 

But there was one thing in Egypt whose remarkable 
mode of behaviour was eminently fitted to illustrate the 
idea in the special light in which the Egyptians had to pre- 
sent it. This was the Nile. The Nile is the source of the 
whole life and fertility of Egypt. Were it not for this 
river, the famous valley through which it flows would be 
covered by the same barren sand that covers the deserts, 
on which no great collection of human beings can live* 


THIRD STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 197 

The Nile is engaged in a constant fight with the barren- 
ness of this land, and effectually conquers it. The Nile, 
therefore, was the salvation of Egypt, so that in this re- 
spect alone it was eminently fitted to symbolise in general 
the good spirits that saved the individual from destruction. 
But now comes the special point which has made the Nile, 
above all other rivers, and above all other processes of Na- 
ture, the thing to symbolise most perfectly what the Egyp- 
tians were trying to express. It is not the Nile in its 
strength and vigour which saves Egypt; it is not the waters 
which it supplies, but the deposit which it carries down 
with it, and which only appears when its waters have re- 
treated and shrunk up, and have lost all their former 
vitality. So that the fertility of Egypt is due, not to the 
life of the Nile, but to the death of the Nile. It is abso- 
lutely necessary that the turgid waters must lose their 
power, must retreat, and must shrink up to the very shadow 
of their former substance, before anything can grow on the 
inundated plains; and as the Nile is in the process of re- 
ceding, it is broken up into innumerable pieces of water 
which dot the land over which it raged so triumphantly a 
short time before. Thus the river dies and is mutilated ; and 
Egypt at once begins to live again. She is actually saved 
through its death, and a vigorous life appears where all was 
desolation before, as the result of that death. All this ex- 
presses very thoroughly those feelings of the Egyptians 
which, starting from a consciousness of a struggle between 
the good and evil spirit, ended in the realisation of a future 
life. 

Now turn to the myth. Osiris, although promoted to 
the position of a sun-god in the third stage of the religious 
development, was undoubtedly, in the second stage, the 
god of the Nile. And he became the great god of Egypt, 


198 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

and the hero of the myth in which the consciousness of 
the future life expresses itself, because the way that the 
Nile behaves does illustrate very accurately the idea that 
was to be expressed. Osiris fights with Set, the evil spirit 
of the desert, but after a long and protracted struggle is 
overcome, is killed, and is mutilated. He is therefore dead 
and done for, and no longer appears on earth again. But 
Isis, the good spirit associated with the alluvial deposit, 
whose nature it is to be carried along concealed in the grasp 
of the river, now appears on the scene and, being filled 
with life-giving energy, she collects the remains of Osiris 
and restores them to life. She does not do this wholly by 
her own power, but with the help of fetich-gods. He has, 
however, been so maimed in his struggle with Set that he 
cannot again return to the upper world, which is the world 
of the living. He lives in the underworld; and this new 
life, this new state of existence which is the result of his 
own death, he allows all the dead to share, who, having 
suffered like himself, appeal to his feelings of compas- 
sion. 

It is clear in this case that the myth is the expression of 
a subjective phase of consciousness in terms of the life 
history of a natural object which is personified in the 
imagination of the individual. All the earlier myths were 
similarly conceived in terms of striking natural processes, 
for it was in these processes that the supernatural specially 
manifested itself to the individual of that period. All these 
processes were thought of as being dominated by the 
demons and the spirits associated with them, and were 
therefore thought of as representing the manner in which 
these supernatural beings behaved. But in later times, 
when the sense of the supernatural was no longer dependent 
on the perception of the objects and processes of Nature, 


THIRD STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 199 

and became instead identified in a great measure with the 
self-consciousness of the individual, the myth, although it 
remained the expression of a self-revelation of the religious 
consciousness, was conceived in different terms. Instead 
of a natural process being taken to represent in objective 
terms this self-revelation, the latter now clothed itself in 
the actions of men themselves. So we get the later form 
of myth, which was more and more made use of to express 
the religious consciousness in the later stages of its develop- 
ment, which embodies itself wholly in the dramatic rep- 
resentation of an episode in human life, and which, but 
for the miraculous element which it always contains, reads 
exactly like any story which is intended solely to depict 
the doings of men. It is this fact which has proved so 
misleading in the case of the Old Testament myths. They 
are so portrayed that, except for the miraculous element 
which they contain, there is nothing to indicate to the reader 
of the present day that he must not give to them a literal 
value; and it has only very recently dawned on the minds 
of scholars that many of these stories are pure myths. But 
whatever may be the guise that the myth assumes at dif- 
ferent periods of the religious development, its meaning is 
always the same. It is always the expression of a sub- 
jective phase of consciousness in terms of the objective 
mind. In other words, although it is true that the human 
mind was at that time groping in the midst of great diffi- 
culties in its efforts to express something, yet this some- 
thing, which it was trying to express, was not anything 
that was taking place in the outside world, but something 
which was taking place in itself. This something which 
was taking place in itself, if it was to express at all, it was 
bound to express in terms of the objective mind. In the 
brains of the most highly developed of the people of that 


200 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

time, these myths evolved themselves, and they were rec- 
ognised by the multitude as revelations of what was 
occurring in the spiritual world. 

In the third stage of the religious development, the di- 
vine presentations were still due to the perception of nat- 
ural objects, but the individual, impelled by that force 
which we have already seen stirring in him in the second 
stage, found that he could most easily facilitate the process 
of worship by looking right away from all terrestrial ob- 
jects, and fixing his gaze on the sky or the celestial bodies. 
The more he did this, the more the divine presentation be- 
came clear and supreme in consciousness. The result of 
this was that he conceived all the greater embodiments 
of the religious idea which revealed themselves to him as 
inhabiting the heavens. Of all the celestial bodies, the 
sun at that period occupied the most important position, 
and whilst the sun-god himself became pre-eminent, all the 
good spirits of the second stage, who had won a prominent 
position, were promoted into intimate association with him, 
and equally worshipped as sun-gods. In the further stage 
of the worship of the celestial bodies, we find that the 
moon occupied the highest position. This is not difficult 
to explain, as it is certainly the moon which excites in us 
the greatest feelings of awe and mystery. The reason why, 
in this early stage of the worship of the celestial bodies, the 
sun was pre-eminent was due to the fact that, in the second 
stage, the rising sun had already acquired special pre- 
eminence in the supernatural world through its power of 
presenting dramatically the triumph of the good spirit over 
the demon. When, therefore, in the succeeding age, the 
individual found that it was only by worshipping some 
celestial body that he could enter into communion with the 


THIRD STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 201 


highest gods, he naturally was predisposed to pay more 
attention to the sun. 

At the same time, the Generic Growth — becoming 
stronger and more developed — now opened wide for the in- 
dividual the portals of the paradise in consciousness. His 
consciousness was now completely flooded with a sense of his 
own immortality, so that he could not conceive it a possi- 
ble or a natural thing that he should die, and he became 
filled with ideas of pre-eminence which raised him in his 
own estimation almost to the level of the highest gods. 
He thought, indeed, a great deal more of his own life and 
his own immortality than he did of the worship of the 
gods. He devoted himself, not to the building of temples 
in which the gods might be worshipped, but rather to the 
building of huge pyramids or temple-tombs in which his 
own body might repose and enjoy an eternity of existence. 
This is, indeed, the period of the great Pyramid builders, 
and as we know, the temples that were then built were 
wholly subsidiary to the Pyramids. So supremely arro- 
gant was the individual, and so assured was he of his own 
position in the supernatural world, that he approached the 
higher gods without any fear or trembling, and even made 
jokes about them and caricatured them. This was not be- 
cause he was in the least degree irreverent or unbelieving 
— as a matter of fact, he believed so much in the super- 
natural world that there hardly existed anything else for 
him — but simply because he regarded the great gods very 
much in the same light as a man of the present day might 
regard his good friend, of whose loyalty he is perfectly 
assured, and whom he occasionally ventures to chaff and 
to jest with in a friendly manner. The demons were still 
there, but of course in this condition of the individual they 
had little power to terrify him, and they were conceived 


202 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

at this period as being safely shut up in the underworld, 
and, as Maspero tells us, they certainly did not trouble the 
individual very much. The number of gods was infinite, 
but they were mostly benignant and inoffensive, and the 
divinity of the individual himself, which we know he 
actually worshipped, occupied a place in the company of 
the very highest. 

Of course it is obvious that the mental attitude induced 
in this third stage of the religious development (which 
we may call the worship of Ra in contradistinction to the 
second stage of the development, which might be fitly as- 
sociated with the name of Osiris) was an altogether differ- 
ent one from that engendered by the preceding stage. In 
the second stage, the individual was turned into a cringing, 
humble person who scarcely dared to hope for the divine 
favour, and was only too willing to abase himself on every 
occasion and in every way to obtain the divine protection. 
The worshipper of Ra was a man filled with self-confidence, 
supremely arrogant indeed, who was certain of salvation 
from his own works and on his own merit. He worshipped 
the gods, but in the full assurance that such worship made 
him the heir to immortal bliss. There was no doubt about 
it in his mind, and so he went on his way serenely self- 
confident, and fearing nothing. Naturally, therefore, in 
his eyes the religion of Osiris was a degrading form of re- 
ligion, a religion which tended to abase him to the ground 
when he felt himself an inhabitant of the empyrean. There 
was therefore between these two phases of the religious idea 
a tremendous antagonism. The priests of Ra, at Heli- 
opolis, appear to have done their utmost to obliterate the 
religion of Osiris, and they appear to have succeeded to a 
certain extent by the destruction of many temples and 
shrines of the earlier time. But the devotion of the com- 


THIRD STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 203 

mon people to the worship of Osiris was too great to be 
suppressed, and the priests of Ra had finally to cease their 
efforts, and to acquiesce in the compromise, which created 
the religious system that remained, for many thousands of 
years to come, the established religion of Egypt. In this 
system Osiris appeared as the benevolent god of an ear- 
lier time, who through his own sufferings and death and 
subsequent resurrection had won for the individual the 
immortality of which the worship of Ra assured him. 
Still, as a god of the underworld, he awaited the appear- 
ance of the individual in the halls of death; but the dead 
appeared to him already assured of immortal life by rea- 
son of the ritual and the methods of preparation which he 
had instituted; it only remained for him now to determine 
the degree of happiness which each individual might de- 
serve as the result of his actions during life. The differ- 
ence is this, that, in the earlier stage, Osiris appears as the 
god who, out of compassion, saves an individual who feels 
his unworthiness and scarcely expects to be saved; whilst, 
as a result of the compromise, he is the god who has taught 
men who are certain of a future life how to dodge the 
demon of death. Nor is it to be wondered at that the 
religion of Osiris could not be completely obliterated at 
that early time, despite the great religious enthusiasm which 
surrounded the worship of Ra; for there is in the idea of 
Osiris something which makes him the type of god to which 
a large number of human beings will unavoidably cling. 
Whilst the worship of Ra is naturally the religion of the 
strong man who is full of confidence and assurance, the 
worship of Osiris is the religion of the individual who feels 
himself weak in the midst of hostile circumstances. Now 
even during each Racial movement which lifted into higher 
phases the religious idea, it was, after all, only the most 


204 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

highly developed that it inspired to the fullest extent; the 
larger number would necessarily remain only so far af- 
fected by the religious consciousness as to be filled with 
aspirations which they found it difficult or impossible to 
achieve. But especially in each recurrent period of Racial 
decay would the tendency of large masses to revert to the 
earlier type of religion be most pronounced, for at these 
periods of Racial decay, even in the higher phases of the 
religious development, the tendency was for religious con- 
ceptions to degenerate rapidly through a weakening of the 
Neo-andric ganglia. Thus the worship of Osiris persisted 
throughout the whole of the religious history of Egypt as 
the most integral part of its religious system, and although 
the figure of Osiris underwent, during this long period, all 
the transfigurations which were necessary to fit it for a 
chief embodiment of the religious idea during its several 
stages of development, yet it was the old conception of 
Osiris which was the most permanent, and tended to recur 
again and again. Osiris, in fact, became the type of divine 
being to whom men cling when they are conscious of their 
own weakness, and who ensures them immortal life in spite 
of their weakness and their sinfulness. 

As the Generic Growth became stronger and more devel- 
oped, it was natural that the divine presentations should 
become more uniform in the characters which they assumed 
in consciousness, and should so resemble each other that it 
might become very difficult always to distinguish one from 
the other. The perceptions of the Palseogynic mind-organ 
were to the uttermost degree distinct and definite from one 
another ; for they were accompanied in consciousness by dif- 
ferent combinations of an enormous number of external 
sense impressions all of which differed very radically from 
each other. But it is easy to see that the resultant in 


THIRD STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 205 

consciousness of the stimulation of one Neo-andric ganglion 
could not be very different from that of the stimulation 
of any other Neo-andric ganglion; for the Neo-andric 
ganglia, being subjective and tending to suppress all ob- 
jective sense impressions, could at most evoke an accom- 
paniment only of sense impressions derived from the in- 
ternal viscera of the body. That subjective states of con- 
sciousness are often accompanied by such visceral sensa- 
tions is a well-known fact. In the language of the Archaic 
world, as well as in the language of the present day, used 
to portray the emotions, the state of the soul is often de- 
scribed in terms of these visceral sensations, the most im- 
portant being those associated with the heart, lungs, and 
the bowels. But these visceral impressions are few in num- 
ber and differ only very feebly in character among them- 
selves; for the clear differentiation and the enormous mul- 
tiplication of them is absolutely unnecessary for the main- 
tenance of the individual. Whilst it is of advantage for 
the individual in the struggle for existence to be able to 
appreciate to the utmost degree the minutest differences 
which distinguish one body from another in the outside 
world, so that he may make use of them, or avoid them, 
as the case may be; it is obvious that he does not need to 
know anything about his visceral organs so long as they 
perform their functions properly. Thus these visceral 
sense impressions, being so rudimentary, could not possibly 
serve effectually to differentiate the state of consciousness 
evoked by the stimulation of one Neo-andric ganglion from 
that produced by the stimulation of every other; in all 
their other attributes in consciousness the Neo-andric ganglia 
simply expressed the life of the Generic Organism, and so 
far as these attributes are concerned, the representations 
evoked by them were absolutely uniform and similar in 


206 the significance of ancient religions 

character. The states of consciousness produced by the 
stimulation of the various Neo-andric ganglia were there- 
fore very similar to each other, and tended naturally to 
merge one into the other. Because the Palseogynic Mind- 
organ was so powerful in the early stages of the Generic 
Growth, its perceptions managed to retain, over all the 
ecstatic personified representations of the new conscious- 
ness, their inherent multiformity; but the ecstatic element 
was essentially uniform, and was constantly tending to 
merge one presentation into the other by obscuring the 
points of difference in their perceptual parts. This merg- 
ing of the identity of one god into another was very marked 
even at so early a period of the religious development as 
that with which we are at present dealing; and bearing 
this tendency in mind, we can easily understand that, as 
the development progressed and the unity of the Generic 
Organism manifested itself more and more in consciousness, 
the number of great gods should correspondingly diminish. 
Whilst in the earlier phase of the religious idea the num- 
ber of demons was enormous — a separate demon existing, 
not merely for every object, but for every phase of an ob- 
ject; or, in other words, a separate demon existed for every 
idea which the human mind was capable of having — in 
each succeeding phase the number of gods became smaller. 
The fact does not reveal itself so clearly in the actual study 
of the great religious systems of antiquity, because all these 
great religious systems of antiquity, with the exception of 
Judaism, represent really a fusion of all the ideas emanating 
from several phases, and do not represent solely any single 
phase. Yet in each religious system one single phase is 
sufficiently predominant to enable one to discern the truth 
of their progression towards the complete uniformity and 
singleness of the final embodiment of the religious idea. 


THIRD STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 207 

The number of good spirits is smaller than that of the de- 
mons. The great gods worshipped by the early Egyptians 
were smaller in number again than the good spirits. In 
the later Babylonian and Assyrian religions the number of 
the great gods is still smaller. In Brahminism and in 
Zoroastrianism, two or three gods only occupy the highest 
place, and of these only one is really worshipped by the 
individual. 

In this stage, the principal effect of the Generic Growth 
on the mind of the individual was to flood it with an over- 
whelming sense of eternity ; and the quality of eternity was 
therefore the chief attribute of every divine figure. All 
the great works of the early dynastic Egyptians are con- 
ceived on such a scale as to impress the individual with a 
sense of their eternity; and no monument or work of any 
kind could claim the highest religious significance if it did 
not express in itself, by an obvious capacity for endurance, 
this quality. It was for this reason that the men of this 
period began to use stone alone in the construction of their 
shrines and monuments instead of wood, as had formerly 
been their custom. And the larger the stone and the more 
durable its substance, the better was it fitted to subserve the 
religious purpose. Thus the excessive size and the durabil- 
ity of the stones employed in the great temples and pyra- 
mids has become one of the chief characteristics of Egyp- 
tian architecture, and fills us with amazement at the pres- 
ent day. The amount of labour necessitated by dealing 
with such materials must have been appalling, but they did 
it cheerfully because they had to endow everything which 
represented their religious consciousness with the element 
of eternal durability. How they managed to deal success- 
fully with these large masses of stone — how they built their 
enormous pyramids and carved their great statues into such 


208 the significance of ancient religions 


exquisite shapes out of single blocks of stone, so hard as 
to baffle the finest steel instruments of the present day — is, 
indeed, one of the mysteries which surrounds the whole sub- 
ject of Egyptology; and it cannot fail to suggest the proba- 
bility that these people were possessed of material appli- 
ances and of a material knowledge far more extensive than 
that which we usually attribute to them. But what I par- 
ticularly want to point out is, that these large stones, espe- 
cially when fashioned into suitable shapes, might come to 
symbolise eternity in themselves. As particularly suitable 
embodiments of the chief characteristic of the highest super- 
natural beings, they would become in this third stage of the 
religious development, specially sacred. And whilst in a 
civilised country like Egypt they would only be used in the 
construction of religious buildings, yet it is easy to see that 
in distant regions which were in some way affected by this 
same Racial movement, mystical collections of large stones 
might be used with infinitely less labour to express the same 
idea and to become as efficient a means for stimulating the 
individual to a sense of the divine. Such collections of 
great stones are met with over a wide area of Europe and 
Asia; and as they are all of them obviously very ancient, 
they are, in all probability, productions of tribes who had 
something of the same feeling that made the early dynastic 
Egyptians wear their lives out in trying to express, in huge 
stones, their religious consciousness. 

This third stage of the process of religious ideation is, 
in fact, the religion which we find established in the early 
dynastic period of Egyptian history. In this stage we find, 
on the one side, a tremendous increase in the power of the 
gods, and, on the other side, an equivalent exaltation of 
self-consciousness in the individual. All the divine presen- 
tations of animistic origin still remained in existence; every 


THIRD STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 209 

object and process in Nature had its attendant demon or 
good spirit. But above this level the religious conscious- 
ness revealed to men a higher category of divinity, which 
was occupied by a smaller number of gods who were far 
more powerful and more universal in character than the 
good spirits of the second stage, although they were in most 
cases identified with those particular animistic spirits who 
had, from reasons already stated, attained to a greater de- 
gree of prominence in their own class. The power of this 
new class of deities was so great that their triumph over the 
demons was complete, and the latter, in this stage of the re- 
ligious development, were securely locked away in the un- 
derworld, and incapable of hurting the individual so long 
as the latter was assiduous in the worship of the higher gods. 
And instead of their power being merely local and bound 
down to the particular object or process in Nature which, in 
the second stage, they had personified: in this new and ex- 
alted sphere of divinity their influence became co-extensive 
with space and eternity, and they ruled in a universal man- 
ner over all the objects and processes of Nature. The indi- 
vidual, on the other hand, became so elevated by the exalta- 
tion of his self-consciousness that he became extremely arro- 
gant and inflated with ideas of his own importance. He no 
longer grovelled in the dust when worshipping the gods, but 
stood erect; and as, in this attitude, he could most easily 
become unconscious of those earthly objects which still in- 
cessantly evoked in him the divine presentation by fixing his 
gaze on the heavens, the latter necessarily became the spe- 
cial object to which he addressed himself when he wor- 
shipped, and all the great gods became identified with the 
sun. In this supreme position, their sway was necessarily 
universal, and their worship necessitated the unification of 
all the separate communities who had each worshipped a 


2io THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


different god into one coherent state, consisting of all those 
whose religious consciousness forced them to tender allegi- 
ance to the higher gods; and this unified state had to be 
ruled over by an individual who represented in himself the 
supreme and universal power of the higher gods. It was in 
this way that the idea of kingship arose, and as all men 
whose religious consciousness made them natural worship- 
pers of the higher gods were already so arrogant that they 
conceived themselves as being in some measure divine and 
immortal, the king easily became regarded as one of the 
greatest of the gods. Thus in the early dynastic period of 
Egyptian history, we find the whole country unified under 
the rule of a deified king, and this unification appears to 
have taken place, not by conquest, but by the consent of all 
those who owned allegiance to the mighty sun-gods. Of 
these mighty sun-gods Ra was chief and type. Being so 
much more powerful than the animistic presentations of the 
second stage, they were immune from the influence of witch- 
craft. The only weak point about them lay in that essential 
name which signalises their exact position in the company 
of the gods. The knowledge of this essential name gave to 
the individual, and especially to a sorcerer, the power of in- 
fluencing the god in a way which he might abuse. These 
essential names were therefore jealously guarded from pub- 
lic knowledge, and the tendency was rather to confuse one 
god with another, and the great gods with the animistic 
spirits, so that no one should have a certain idea of the spe- 
cific identity of each of the greater gods except those high 
priests who ruled over the cult of each god, and who had, 
by a long period of probation and initiation, so filled them- 
selves with the spirit of the god that they could not possi- 
bly injure the gods without injuring themselves. These 
high priests, on the other hand, by frequently repeating in a 


THIRD STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 21 1 


special manner the essential name of the god, greatly in- 
creased the power of the god; and thus this repetition was 
for them, as it became later for the Brahmins, one of the 
chief modes of worship. 

But although these higher gods were so powerful, it must 
be remembered that their power, and even their existence, 
still depended on the worship, the prayer, and the sacrifice 
that men offered up to them. They could not exist unless 
men induced in themselves the mental attitude of worship; 
they could not be active in the suppression of the demons 
and in the general maintenance of their economy of the uni- 
verse unless they were prayed to, and if men did not feed 
them by daily and hourly sacrifices they became starved 
and void of energy. We see from the Negative Confession 
to Osiris that although at this period the worship of the 
gods was not the sole duty imposed on men, it had yet be- 
come one of the chief obligations imposed on them, and any 
omission in this respect ranked as high as any of the greatest 
crimes against humanity. But provided they were properly 
worshipped, these gods were benevolent; they were not em- 
bodiments of passion as the gods that were worshipped by 
the later Babylonians, and they were therefore neither cruel 
nor particularly immoral ; and in like manner the individual, 
although supremely arrogant, was neither cruel nor selfish, 
but full of consideration for the people around him. The 
inscriptions of the period bring out the self-exaltation of the 
individual very clearly, but they also bear full witness to 
the general benevolence and humanity of his character. 


CHAPTER VI 


RELATION BETWEEN EARLY RELIGIONS AND CIVILISATION 

There is therefore no doubt about the continuity of the 
three first stages in the process of religious ideation. And 
before going any further, I want the reader clearly to under- 
stand that no advance could have been made in material 
knowledge during the first two stages, and that therefore 
the vast mechanical equipment signalised by the works of 
the Fourth Dynasty must have been inherited from a civili- 
sation which was in existence before the pagan religious con- 
sciousness commenced its historic development. 

It is obvious at once that in the first stage the constant 
perception of a demon in every object would paralyse the 
individual in his handling and manipulation of the materi- 
als of Nature. His capacity, therefore, for all kinds of 
mechanical achievement would be grievously impaired, and 
the material equipment of his existence would be reduced 
to its lowest possible limits. In all forms of labour, in 
every art and craft, in the provision of all the material 
furniture of life, he would only dare to do that which was 
absolutely indispensable to render his existence possible and 
endurable. Up to a certain point, the use and handling of 
materials had become necessary to his existence ; and to that 
point he continued his activity in the old ways, under the 
protective influence of the sorcerer and his ministrations. 
But beyond this everything was tabooed, and things that 
were simply luxuries, or even comforts, or that ministered 
to his sense of beauty, were gradually swept out of his life. 
That which makes things beautiful to us is something about 


EARLY RELIGIONS AND CIVILISATION 


213 


them that stimulates the imagination; and such a stimula- 
tion of the imagination was what he was compelled to avoid 
above everything. And even the few things that he con- 
tinued to do were bound to be done badly. For it was es- 
sential for his well-being that he should linger as little as 
possible over the handling and manipulation of any ma- 
terial. What he did, he did hurriedly, and with as little 
concentration of the attention as possible; gripped with the 
horrible dread of what might manifest itself to him if he 
disturbed too much these materials pregnant with evil 
shapes, or tarried too long in the hated contact with them; 
in spite of the purifications to which they had been sub- 
jected, and in spite of the protective influences which had 
been showered upon him. And as to acquiring any fresh 
knowledge concerning the forces and materials of Nature, or 
striking out any new line of activity, or manipulating ma- 
terials in a new way — that, of course, was out of the ques- 
tion. For in the thought of every process that was new 
and unfamiliar, there lurked an angry demon; and the sense 
of this paralysed the curiosity and the initiative of the indi- 
vidual. Even if some unlucky chance caused a new fact of 
the material world to reveal itself to him spontaneously, 
nothing was gained ; for, on the instant, the dreaded appari- 
tion gripped him with its horrible fascination, and killed 
the dawning perception by monopolising his attention. In 
short, the state of mind in which demon-worship originated 
barred all advance in material knowledge; and even ren- 
dered the doing of anything in a way that was not conse- 
crated by ancient tradition and custom, a criminal matter. 

In the second stage, although the good spirits now visu- 
alised and associated with the objects and processes of Na- 
ture were friendly to man, yet the obligation imposed on 
the individual by the religious consciousness of turning away 


214 the significance of ancient religions 

from, and thus of not familiarising himself with, any such 
object and process that claimed his attention, necessarily put 
a check on the objective method of thought which rendered 
it impossible for the individual to regain that power of ex- 
ternal observation on which all material knowledge rests. 
If the individual was not .so much frightened by the objects 
and processes in Nature that had anything remarkable in 
them as he was in the first stage, the effect they produced on 
him was nevertheless one of overwhelming awe, which had 
exactly the same effect of paralysing his objective powers of 
thought and observation. His attention was no longer 
gripped by the material nature of an external object, and 
fixed itself instead on the divinely radiant spirit that ap- 
peared to be associated with it. In other words, the de- 
velopment of the religious consciousness induced in him, in 
this stage, a mental attitude which caused him to think of 
natural objects and processes as simply manifestations of 
the existence of supernatural beings, and so blurred his sense 
of their reality that he became incapable of accurately ob- 
serving or of describing any phenomena. It is easy enough 
to understand that such a mental attitude would render im- 
possible any advance in material knowledge; but beyond 
this it would utterly fail to reintegrate in him that capacity 
for dealing with the objects and processes of Nature which 
he possessed before the first stage of the religious develop- 
ment overwhelmed him with its suggestions of a malignant 
presence in every particle of the material world. For 
although the new spirts of the second stage were benevolent 
and capable of overcoming the demons if he addressed them 
in a pjoper manner, yet they only did so in proportion to the 
extent in which he allowed them to absorb his attention. 
He was only safe from the demons if he were entirely 
wrapped up in contemplation of the good spirits. The mo- 


EARLY RELIGIONS AND CIVILISATION 215 

ment he allowed his attention to fix itself on the realities of 
the external world, he became unpleasantly conscious of the 
presence of the demons. Thus the final results of the 
second stage of the religious development in this respect 
would be very similar to that of the first. Only insofar 
as was absolutely necessary to maintain their existence 
would people continue to avail themselves of the material 
knowledge which they had inherited from the past. Their 
handling of the forces and materials of Nature would be 
much more limited than it had been before the origin of the 
religious development; and the acquisition of any fresh 
knowledge would be absolutely tabooed. 

In short, the effect of the first two stages of the religious 
development was as catastrophic to the objective intelli- 
gence of man as those that followed. From the very first 
moment that the individual visualised demons in the objec- 
tive processes of Nature, he completely lost the power of in- 
telligently observing the phenomena of the outside world; 
his perception of their outlines and relations became so 
blurred that the sum total of physical phenomena became 
for him a phantasmagoria of the senses. The mental atti- 
tude induced rendered him incapable of accurately observ- 
ing, and therefore of justly appreciating, the properties and 
relations of objects, and the physical causation of events; 
and it was not merely in solitary individuals that this hap- 
pened, but in the great masses of individuals comprised in 
each Racial movement. The force that determined the 
turning away from Nature was the whole energy of the Ra- 
cial movement itself. For each successive stage of the re- 
ligious development was the production of a separate Racial 
movement ; this development, indeed, was the thing in which 
was expended, in the Archaic world, the massive energy of 
each Racial movement. Material knowledge inherited 


216 the significance of ancient religions 

from earlier ages might of course persist, especially through- 
out the initial stages of the development ; but the whole en- 
ergy of each Racial movement, at any rate during its period 
of growth, would be directed against the acquisition of fresh 
material knowledge; and the new habits of thought acquired 
during each of these long periods of developmental activity 
would necessarily tend to render more imperfect the knowl- 
edge inherited. 

This tendency belonged to the religious development from 
the very first, even in its earliest stage of Animism; so that 
from the very moment this stage manifests itself, we can 
confidently date a general turning away from that attitude 
towards Nature which results in the acquisition of fresh 
material knowledge. From that very moment all acquisi- 
tion of fresh material knowledge was inhibited by a force 
which grew ever stronger, until the growth of the pagan re- 
ligious consciousness had come to an end. The apprecia- 
tion of this fact is of the very highest importance; without 
it we could not possibly succeed in disentangling the re- 
ligious development from its embryonic coverings; we could 
not possibly say what, amongst the many phenomena of the 
times, really belonged to, or proceeded from, the religious 
development, and what had existed before the religious de- 
velopment commenced ; and so we could not bring its whole 
form sufficiently into the light of day to determine satisfac- 
torily its nature. 

If this is so, it is clear that the vast equipment of material 
knowledge signalised in the works and handicrafts of the 
Egyptians of the Fourth Dynasty; the material knowledge 
involved in the construction of their pyramids and temples, 
the irrigation and culture of their land, the navigation of 
their rivers and seas — to mention only a few of the most 
prominent items in which this material knowledge reveals 


EARLY RELIGIONS AND CIVILISATION 217 

itself to us; it is clear that this vast equipment of material 
knowledge was the creation neither of the first four Dyn- 
astic periods, nor even of that pre-dynastic period in which 
we find the phase of Animism fully established. It must 
have been the creation of some period antecedent to the so- 
called pre-historic period, when the religious idea had not 
yet commenced its fateful development. 

This may, at first sight, appear a somewhat startling con- 
clusion, in view of the fact that we possess no monuments, 
no great works, nor even any records of a period in which 
the religious idea was not present. If it is a fact that the 
people in Egypt, before the commencement of the religious 
development, possessed the same material knowledge as ex- 
isted in the Fourth Dynastic period, how is it — the reader 
may very well ask — that they did not make use of it in the 
same way, and leave behind them equally permanent relics 
of their condition 4 ? How is it that the vestiges that remain 
to us of even the pre-historic period, give us the impression 
of a mechanical skill, a material intelligence, and an artistic 
aptitude infinitely inferior to those of the brilliant age of 
the great pyramid builders 4 ? 

But the answer to this question is not difficult to find. It 
lies in the very fact that all the works that stand as monu- 
ments, or in which were preserved the records, of this early 
period, are of a religious character. It was the religious 
ideas of the early Egyptians that impelled them to give to 
their pyramids and temples those attributes of immensity 
and durability which render them conspicuous amongst all 
the other works of the human race, and which have enabled 
them to survive to the present day. It was their religious 
ideas, again, that made them strive to protect their tombs — 
or at any rate, the tombs of those who were great amongst 


2 1 8 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


them — from the hazards of the ages to come; and caused 
them to lavish on the internal ornamentation of these 
tombs the highest art of which they were capable, in the 
representation of the common acts of their daily lives. 
These graven illustrations are so well done that the daily 
actions, the manners and customs, the dress, the social in- 
stitutions, the religious beliefs, and the very implements 
made use of in those days, are matters with which we at 
the present day are familiar; but all the energy and skill 
consumed in the heaping up of this great treasure would 
never have been put forth but for the religious ideas that 
inspired the men of that period. Chief amongst these ideas 
was that realisation of the eternal life which has created 
the belief in the immortality of the human being. In no 
other Race has the sense of material eternity manifested it- 
self so unrestrainedly. It awakened in the Egyptian of the 
Fourth Dynastic period an overwhelming craving to ex- 
press in eternal symbols the majesty of that new element 
which flooded human consciousness with its dazzling radi- 
ance, and to perpetuate in eternal symbols the daily experi- 
ences of the individual, so that the vision of them should be 
ever present in, and serve to increase the fulness of, his ex- 
istence after death. And it is because of this craving to 
satisfy the obligation laid on him by the growth of the re- 
ligious idea that to-day we possess irrefragable evidence of 
the extent of his material knowledge and a very extensive 
vision of the daily events of his life. 

The attitude of the dynastic Egyptian was that of one 
who is certain of a future life because he actually is, or pos- 
sesses something in himself that is, immortal. It was 
natural for him to believe that he had the same power over 
his destiny in the future life as he had in the present one; 
for the one was to him merely a necessary continuation of 


EARLY RELIGIONS AND CIVILISATION 219 

the other; so real in its certainty was the future that it be- 
longed to the same category of things, and was governed by 
the same laws, as the present. Hence the elaborate means 
employed by the worshippers of Ra to preserve the body 
and its resting-place, to furnish the disembodied spirit with 
passports to eternity which could not be denied, and to pro- 
vide it with visions of earthly scenes that assured it the 
satisfaction of familiar surroundings; hence, in short, the 
mode of behaviour which has made his tomb-chamber a 
storehouse of information for us. But for the pre-dynastic 
Egyptian the case was very different; and it is because of 
this difference that it was not till the fourth dynasty that 
the material equipment of this remote period took the form 
which makes it capable of revealing itself to our eyes at the 
present day. 

In the pre-dynastic period the sense of eternal life had 
manifested itself to the point of creating a fear of death and 
a longing for immortality, and a sense that immortality 
might be achieved; but there was no certainty in the 
matter, for there did not yet exist in the human being 
that assured confidence in his own immortality that later on 
became one of the chief characteristics of the worshippers of 
Ra. The human being might achieve immortality, but only 
through the power of Osiris, and not by any means through 
his own merit, or through his own works, or the works of his 
fellow-creatures. Osiris, after having been vanquished, 
killed, and mutiliated, as the result of his conflict with Set, 
who personified the malignant principle in Nature, had, by 
the help of some other gods, found his way back from death 
to life; and being well disposed towards human beings he 
was ready to make use of the knowledge gained in his own 
experiences for the behoof of those poor mortals who ap- 
pealed to his pity. To achieve immortality, therefore, it 


220 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


was necessary for human beings so to behave that Osiris 
might have pity on them after death and, taking them under 
his guidance, lead them back to life. It was not for them 
to exhibit any signs of the presumptuous certainty of the 
dynastic Egyptians; or to lavish the highest resources of 
their mechanical equipment on the service of the dead; nor 
did they attempt to do so. Their sole trust was in the good 
offices of Osiris. Thus the dead were started off towards 
the portals guarded by Osiris in the guise of miserable and 
abject beings, possessed of no merit of their own, and only 
relying for salvation on the pity they might arouse in that 
benignant god who, through his own sufferings, death, and 
resurrection, had shorn death of its sting, and had discov- 
ered for them the way to eternal life. The corpse of the 
pre-dynastic Egyptian was simply packed away in a badly 
made receptacle in a crouching position, devoid of dignity; 
and it was horribly mutilated besides. But this was not 
because the pre-dynastic Egyptians were savages, and de- 
void of that material knowledge which has made so grand 
and beautiful the pyramids and tombs of the Dynastic 
period; it was simply in furtherance of the religious belief 
that in order to win through the gates of death into immor- 
tality they were bound to present themselves before Osiris 
in the guise of miserable and abject beings, so that he 
should take pity on them, and admit them into the realms 
of bliss. 

Furthermore, in the phase of Animism, the religious idea 
is weak and diffuse. It awakens, in respect of every object, 
the consciousness of a supernatural being. But none of 
these beings are sufficiently differentiated from the objects 
which they animate, to possess the distinction and sublimity 
which belong to the later embodiments of the religious idea. 
The element introduced by the religious idea into conscious- 


EARLY RELIGIONS AND CIVILISATION 


221 


ness does not sufficiently assert its pre-eminence over the 
material idea with which it is associated to raise the whole 
conception into the eternal majesty of those transcendental 
regions of thought from which it emanates. In the dynastic 
Egyptian, on the other hand, the religious idea awakened 
a conception of something far greater than Nature, or any 
object in Nature; and the majesty in this conception they 
strove to express in works obviously designed, as Mr. Petrie 
has well said, to dwarf in their minds the impression made 
in them by Nature. But for the pre-dynastic Egyptian this 
ideal did not exist, for the simple reason that in their minds 
the religious idea had not sufficiently developed to dwarf 
the impression created by nature. Hence there was no mo- 
tive power in the religious idea, as it manifested itself in 
them, to lead to the production of such works as those, to the 
execution of which the dynastic Egyptians cheerfully con- 
secrated their whole lives. 

But it may be said that it was only in the fourth dy- 
nasty that the greatest works were produced — why do not 
the works of the earlier dynasties show the same excellence 
in design and execution*? The answer to this is simply that 
it was the natural consequence of the Law of Racial Move- 
ments. In the historical period which centres round the 
fourth dynasty, we are evidently in face of a Racial move- 
ment. The energy of a Racial movement increases to a 
definite point, and then ebbs away until it becomes ex- 
tinct. In this case, as in the case of all the Archaic Racial 
movements, this energy expended itself mainly in establish- 
ing a new phase in the further development of the religious 
idea. That stage of the religious idea which finds expres- 
sion in the great works of the fourth dynasty only came into 
being as the result of a slow growth through many centuries. 
Archaeologists tell us that there is plenty of evidence to 


222 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


show that the period comprised by the first three dynasties 
was one in which a rapid evolution in religious thought took 
place. Therefore we have to realise the fact that the domi- 
nant phase of the religious idea during the greater part of 
this early period would be that which had been established 
in pre-dynastic times, and that this phase would only be 
slowly displaced by the new development. In other words, 
there occurred a gradual change from a religious phase 
which discouraged any considerable application of their ma- 
terial resources and knowledge in the service of the dead, to 
one which obliged them to exhibit, in this service, the highest 
material achievements of which they were capable. Corre- 
sponding to this gradual change in the religious idea, there- 
fore, we should expect — what we actually find to be the 
case — a gradual improvement in the material means em- 
ployed ; an improvement both in execution and design. But 
it would be altogether wrong to assume from this picture of 
a gradual improvement that the Egyptians were undergoing 
during these three dynasties an education in the mechanical 
arts, and were freshly discovering that extensive material 
knowledge which is signalised in the works of the fourth 
dynasty. In the light of what has been said before, it is 
impossible to admit such a development of material knowl- 
edge; and the matter is at once made clear if we bear in 
mind the necessary consequences of the fact that the re- 
ligious idea was undergoing the momentous changes indi- 
cated above. 

So much for the three first dynasties, and that pre- 
dynastic period in which was established the Animistic con- 
ception of Nature. And if the reader has grasped the fact 
that it was a certain development of the religious idea which 
gave to the material equipment of the day that form which 
has made it familiar to us, and that without this form we 


EARLY RELIGIONS AND CIVILISATION 223 

should never have been able to verify the fact that 4,000 
years before Christ the Egyptians were possessed of the ma- 
terial knowledge so brilliantly signalised in the works of the 
fourth dynasty; if he has grasped this pregnant fact, then 
he scarcely needs to be told that the absence of monuments 
or records from the period before the commencement of the 
religious development, does not in the least contra-indicate 
the conclusion that this period was one possessed of the same 
knowledge. It would have been a utilitarian age, in which 
men simply applied this knowledge for the purposes of the 
moment, and never dreamt of exhausting themselves and 
their resources in the creation of works capable of enduring 
for ever. And in the disposal of the dead, they would nat- 
urally seek to rid themselves as expeditiously — even if as 
decently — as possible of a noxious encumbrance ; and would 
certainly not dream of making the protection of the corpse, 
and its refreshment, an object of supreme importance in 
their lives. Their works, and the memory of all they were 
capable of knowing and of doing, would necessarily disap- 
pear in the succeeding ages ; their material knowledge, in the 
hands of religious enthusiasts, would become an element 
of the divine wisdom; and once absorbed into the transcen- 
dental vision of things, it was natural and inevitable that its 
real derivation should become obliterated, and its origin 
popularly ascribed to the gods themselves. 

But if this is so, then it is clear that men allowed them- 
selves to worship natural objects like stones and trees after 
they had fully grasped their material properties; and that 
they became a prey to the belief in supernatural agencies 
after they had fully realised the relationships of material 
objects and the physical laws that govern them. They 
therefore did not come to worship these things simply 
because their minds were empty of objective ideas, nor did 


224 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

they come to imagine every process to be due to the action 
of a personal will similar to their own, simply because they 
were entirely ignorant of the physical causation of events. 
The knowledge signalised in the works of the fourth dynasty 
belongs to an intelligence which had formulated very defi- 
nite ideas of the physical properties of materials, and of 
the modes of action of natural forces. That they were ac- 
customed to systematise their knowledge is also evident from 
certain extant treatises. In short, their habit of thought 
was objective and scientific. And it was after their minds 
had become trained to this habit of thought, that the con- 
sciousness of things divine suddenly arose in them, blurring 
their perceptions, choking up the grooves in which they had 
been accustomed to think, and substituting in general for the 
objective form of mentation the intuitional feelings and su- 
persensuous inspirations which emanated solely from itself. 

This, then, is the true perspective of the origin of re- 
ligious conceptions; clearly revealed to us by an historical 
rendering of the archaeological evidence. The reader must 
thoroughly grasp the significance of the view thus obtained. 
It is plain that religious conceptions were not the natural 
result of the objective intelligence, or ignorance, of the indi- 
vidual. And it is equally certain that they were not due to 
any existent reality in the nature of the objects themselves. 
We are all of us agreed that there is nothing in the nature of 
a stone, a tree, or a cat, for example, that imperatively 
calls for the worship of the human being. Whilst religious 
conceptions, therefore, originated in intimate association 
with sensuous perceptions, it is obvious that they belonged 
in greater part to a phase of consciousness entirely inde- 
pendent of the external phenomenal world. Even in their 
earliest and simplest forms, they were therefore not the re- 
sult of an imperfect mode of thought and perception which 


EARLY RELIGIONS AND CIVILISATION 


225 


Man had to pass through before he could accurately observe 
and intelligently reflect; they were not the result of a first 
contact of his dawning intelligence with surroundings be- 
yond his comprehension ; they were nothing less than indica- 
tions of some new process of development which induced a 
subjective change in his own mental constitution. And 
since that subjective change was necessarily destructive of 
objective capacity, the new development could not have 
started at an age infinitely remote from the early dynastic 
period ; or it would have rendered impossible that profound 
knowledge and confident handling of materials which is so 
evident in the great works and in the art of the Egyptians. 
We can scarcely err if we conclude that at the furthest point 
of the historical perspective of human evolution to which 
our new knowledge leads us, we stand well within two 
thousand years of the origin of the new development. In 
the light of these considerations, it is clear that the process 
of religious ideation must have been a continuous develop- 
ment from a definite point of origin standing in such rela- 
tionship to the historical progression of events in the Arch- 
aic period as to be capable of causing them. 

The same argument applies to the moral and social as- 
pects of civilisation. The effects of the first stage on the 
social nature of the individual would be twofold. In the 
first place, it would render impossible friendly intercourse 
with complete strangers; and in the second place, it would 
tend to undermine the harmony previously existing betwixt 
members of the same community. Fearful and suspicious 
of all things that attracted his attention and that were in 
any way mysterious, it was inevitable that the same feel- 
ings should surge up in each individual at the sight of his 
fellow creatures; for naturally the glint of the supernatural 


226 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

presence was evoked as well by the sight of the human being. 
The effect was greatest in the case of people who differed 
widely in any particular from the type to which the indi- 
vidual was accustomed. Betwixt aliens, then, friendly in- 
tercourse would tend to become impossible; they would 
come to regard each other with feelings of furious hostility 
which, however, would only reveal itself in the infliction 
of injuries in a treacherous and underhanded manner. For 
as yet the religious consciousness was not strong enough to 
endow the individual with the great passions which, later on 
in the history of the development, made him capable of 
looking upon an enemy without fear and trembling. The 
attitude and behaviour of the demon worshipper was always 
that of a coward. In the case of individuals belonging to 
the same community, who therefore lived in frequent and 
familiar intercourse, the tendency to open hostility was, of 
course, very much less marked; because, being thus habitu- 
ated to each other, they were less capable of defining in 
each other the evil presence that was liable to manifest it- 
self in them. Nevertheless, the tendency to this definition 
would always be there, and at odd moments the phenome- 
non would be sure to reveal itself with startling intensity. 
In these circumstances, a state of mutual suspicion and aver- 
sion was inevitable. Each individual beheld in a fellow- 
creature a possible enemy, and though he might fight against 
the horrible feeling, and correct it in some measure, it was 
bound to become in time a permanent characteristic, which 
made for estrangement. 

In the second stage, as the gods were friendly and in- 
clined to pity and to succour human beings, their worship 
necessarily tended to produce in the individual a spirit of 
sympathy and good fellowship, and to suppress a good deal 
of what was actually malignant in the disposition created 


EARLY RELIGIONS AND CIVILISATION 


227 

by the first stage; and this would in great measure rein- 
tegrate in the human being the social feelings which had 
been so rudely damaged by the first stage of the religious 
development. But this suppression of feelings engendered 
by the belief in malignant spirits would not be complete. 
In the first place, it would only operate when the individu- 
als were completely under the influence of one of the 
good spirits; but as the good spirits were very much less 
numerous than the demons, and the ordinary vocations of 
human life led the individual into all manner of situations 
wherein the influence of the demon could not fail to regain 
some of its damaged intensity, it is clear that human na- 
ture would still remain very liable to undercurrents of feel- 
ings hostile to the civilised mode of existence, even though 
these undercurrents might be only occasional and intermit- 
tent. In the second place, the good spirits were themselves 
always fighting; so that their worship would necessarily 
engender in the individual a tendency in the same direction 
which, if it could not yet arouse in him the savage lust of 
the warrior, must make him more quarrelsome, and more 
prone to pass from the stage of mere suspicion and aversion 
to that of active hostility. But beyond this imperfect heal- 
ing of the wounds in the social character of the human be- 
ing inflicted by the first stage of the religious development, 
the second stage introduced new ideas which quite inde- 
pendently could not but seriously impair the capacity of the 
individual either to build up or to maintain the social or- 
ganisation necessary to secure the harmony of a civilised 
mode of existence, and keep in abeyance the always insur- 
gent element of individualism. For these new ideas led 
him to seek for salvation from all the ills of life in the su- 
pernatural world which was unfolding itself to him; and 
made him proportionately indifferent to the value of the 


228 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

material organisation of society, and to the rigid mainte- 
nance of those principles of justice, equality, and reciprocity 
which such a material organisation must uphold in a state of 
civilisation. The great thing for the human being in this 
stage of the religious development was to secure immunity 
from the assaults of the demons; and to attain this state of 
spiritual salvation he was quite ready to sacrifice the bene- 
fits conferred on him by a material state of civilisation. 
All the higher energies of his life were turned away from the 
task of making himself a good citizen and of maintaining 
the organisation which was necessary for the harmony of 
social existence, and centred in one supreme and continuous 
effort to make himself an adept in the worship of the good 
spirits. And in like manner the higher energies of the 
whole Race were devoted to the building up and to the per- 
fecting of a system of religious practices which might make 
the good spirits more accessible to the individual and more 
capable of securing for him his spiritual salvation. More- 
over, the new ideas caused the individual to regard all hu- 
man beings who distinguished themselves in any way, and 
especially the priests who were able to render easier for him 
the ways of salvation, as if they were gods themselves; and 
an overwhelming impulsion drove him to approach these 
supreme ones in the attitude of a cringing suppliant, and he 
was only too ready to tolerate in them any infraction of so- 
cial laws, and to offer to them his services and his posses- 
sions if only by these means he could obtain their favour. 
It is true that these commencing inequalities of social posi- 
tion produced no very bad result, for the simple reason that 
the great passions of humanity had not yet developed to any 
large extent, and there was nothing to impel the supreme 
ones, thus marked out and placed in a separate category by 
the consent of the whole community, to abuse their privi- 


EARLY RELIGIONS AND CIVILISATION 


229 


leges and their position. The mental attitude of these su- 
preme ones was equally that induced by the second stage of 
the religious development, and thus necessarily bred sympa- 
thy and compassion for the weakness of human beings with- 
out any capacity for taking an undue advantage of this 
weakness. Thus the government of the old Chaldean com- 
munities by the Patesis , or priest chiefs, was devoid of any 
very manifest abuse, and their mode of existence presents all 
the characteristics of a high grade of civilisation. But the 
tendency thus engendered by the religious consciousness to 
credit certain individuals with the privileges and the powers 
of divine beings was one obviously hostile to the true spirit 
of civilisation, and it became later on one of the chief causes 
of that appalling drift towards barbarism and savagery 
which characterises the succeeding stages of the historical 
evolution of humanity. 

The necessity of worshipping objects that were mysteri- 
ous and had not been vulgarised by frequent observation, 
moreover, started a drift towards the nomadic form of ex- 
istence which could not but weaken the allegiance of the in- 
dividual to the social bonds that maintain the civilisation of 
a settled community. The new system of family obligations 
which reared itself on the worship of the parent and ances- 
tor, again, was another institution hostile to civilisation, for 
it tended to divide the whole community into separate fami- 
lies and clans, the members of which had a set of obliga- 
tions imposed on them with regard to each other which could 
not but adversely affect their attitude as members of the 
general community. For all the descendants of a common 
ancestor were bound together by bonds which they dared not 
violate without committing a sin of the greatest magnitude, 
which rendered them at once liable to the assaults of the de- 
mons. Each family, therefore, regarded every one of its 


230 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

members as a person whose interests it had to advance and 
whose faults it had to condone, even in defiance of the so- 
cial law; and thus each family became in itself a separate 
unit of social existence. It is clear that such an arrange- 
ment was highly adapted for the necessities of the nomadic 
form of existence ; and this breaking up of each community 
into separate families was no doubt highly favourable to 
the new mode of wandering about, encouraged by the re- 
ligious idea, which later on developed into those large mi- 
grations from the new Races into the surrounding world. 
But it was a system that was obviously hostile to the uni- 
versal application of the principles of justice, equality, and 
reciprocity which are necessary for the civilised mode of ex- 
istence in a large and heterogeneous community. 

In other words, it is clear that the effect of the first two 
stages of the religious development on the character of the 
individual must have been to lessen, and not to increase, his 
capacity for civilisation. If, therefore, there had not 
already existed a high state of moral and social civilisation 
before this development commenced, it would have been im- 
possible for the institutions and customs of the dynastic 
Egyptians to be so highly permeated by the principles of 
justice, equality, and morality as these undoubtedly were. 
For although, as we have seen, each Racial movement in 
itself tends to produce civilisation, and to compel the in- 
dividual to adopt modes of behaviour in accordance with 
these principles, yet this civilising influence of the Racial 
movement was completely opposed by the influence of the 
religious development. Although not sufficient as yet to 
completely destroy the social and moral attributes of civili- 
sation, this hostile influence was yet strong enough to 
prevent the Racial movement from itself creating them; and 


EARLY RELIGIONS AND CIVILISATION 231 

it thus follows that even in its moral and social characteris- 
tics, the civilisation of the dynastic Egyptians was one which 
must have been inherited from a time before the religious 
development commenced. 


CHAPTER VII 


FOURTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 

The fourth stage of the development is most clearly re- 
vealed to us in the later Babylonian, Assyrian, and Phoeni- 
cian religious systems. In these cults the great gods be- 
came transcendent embodiments of majesty and power, 
towering so high in the imagination of men that they were 
most fitly worshipped as personified conceptions of those 
grand and more mysterious celestial bodies that appear in 
the heavens at night. Appearing in this mysterious guise 
on the horizon of the unfolding consciousness of things di- 
obligations and amenities of his former existence, and 
breathed into his feeble frame the lust and frenzy of their 
vine, they cast the individual into a deep oblivion of the 
great passions. For the mystery that was incarnate in these 
gods was the mystery of passion. The violent activity of 
the terrible Bel and the licentious Ishtar quickened into a 
devouring flame the atmosphere that surrounded them ; and 
in order to worship them properly, and in any degree to 
realise the mystery of the divine, or to appeal to the benevo- 
lent proclivities which still distinguished some of them, the 
individual had to breathe deeply of the same atmosphere. 
In the flood of fiery ecstasy that lifted him to the feet of 
the gods, the character of the individual underwent a great 
and momentous change, and he became a willing destroyer 
of the civilised relations on which the happiness of humanity 
depends. 

We are fortunate in possessing fragments of several Bab- 
ylonian myths in which the religious consciousness of 

232 


FOURTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 233 

this period reveals itself very clearly. In the so-called 
myth of the Creation, a universal chaos and darkness which 
was filled with monstrous figures of demons that were be- 
gotten by the she-dragon Tiamat, was the beginning of all 
things. Then arose the first gods who were at once con- 
fronted by the antagonism of the demons, so that a great 
struggle commenced between them. The new gods ob- 
tained some initial successes, but this called forth Tiamat’s 
vengeance; she aroused the whole world of monstrous and 
malignant beings against the new gods, and attacked them 
with such fury that they were almost overwhelmed. Then 
Marduk, the god of the rising sun, appeared; and under 
his leadership the new gods renewed the contest, with the 
final result that Tiamat and all her legions were overcome. 
Marduk dashed Tiamat to the ground and split her into two 
halves; one half he raised up and made into a covering for 
the heavens. In these heavens he presently prepared the 
stars, the sun, and the moon as stations that still greater gods 
than himself might inhabit; but in order to assure these 
greater gods their lofty position, and to make it certain that 
they might have sufficient energy to maintain their power, 
he devised a cunning plan, and took some of his blood, and 
bone, and made men, as well as the world in which men 
lived, in order that the gods might dwell with pleasure 
therein, and be constantly sustained and reinvigorated by 
the sacrifices which human beings offered to them. This so- 
called account of the Creation is written on seven tablets, 
the seventh of which is simply a hymn in praise of Marduk. 
The whole of the first five tablets are descriptive of the hap- 
penings in the supernatural world of the gods. It is only 
the sixth tablet that concerns itself with the creation of man, 
who thus appears on the scene as a mere appendage of the 
supernatural world, expressly created that he may sustain 


234 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

this world by worship and sacrifice. The latter part of the 
sixth tablet is lost or mutilated, but the last intelligible 
verses herald a complete change in the ways of the gods 
towards men, and indicate that they were becoming dis- 
posed to oppress them, and to drive them into evil. 

Now although this myth is called the myth of the Crea- 
tion, the reader who has followed me so far will see at once 
that it is not a description of the creation of the material 
world, but simply a self-revelation of the development of 
the religious consciousness so far as it had proceeded up to 
the time of the Babylonians. It is simply a description, in 
dramatic fashion, of the sequence of events which I have 
already described as constituting the development of the 
religious consciousness, and thus bears out what I have 
already said concerning myths in general, that they are in 
every case the self-revelation of the religious consciousness ; 
and not any attempt, as they have been generally held to be, 
to explain natural phenomena in a coherent manner. The 
natural objects and processes dealt with in a myth are 
always simply used to express the religious consciousness, 
without any reference to their intrinsic value and relations; 
just as, when we sleep, the dream consciousness clothes itself 
in figures and in situations which are obviously derived from 
our experience of the external world, but which are used in 
this connection only for the purpose of self-revelation 
without any reference to the value and the relations which 
these figures and situations really possess in the outside 
world. All this is very significant, and reveals the 
psychology of the subjective change which lies at the basis 
of the process of religious ideation. But what I want at 
this particular moment especially to emphasise is the clear 
light that this myth throws on the relation subsisting be- 
tween the pagan gods and men. I have said that in the 


FOURTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 235 

earlier stages of the religious development, it had already 
become one of the chief duties of men to sustain the power 
and life of the gods by means of worship and sacrifice; but 
as late as the third stage, however, they received an ade- 
quate return for their worship and sacrifice — the chief func- 
tion of the gods was then to maintain the economy of the 
universe in such a way as to gratify humanity. But this 
myth signalises a further stage in the growth of the evil, and 
a further advance in the monstrous inhumanity of pagan 
philosophy. The only reason for man’s existence is that he 
should render sacrifice and worship to the gods; he gets no 
return for this, and the only happiness possible to him is 
in being assiduous in that worship and that sacrifice, which 
will finally destroy all the things that are most essential to 
human happiness. And he has to undergo all this misery 
and suffering, and to become the cause of endless misery 
and suffering to his fellow-creatures, in order that the gods 
may live and fulfil the various functions of their existence. 

The most prominent gods of this class were, as I have 
already said, pure embodiments of the twin passions which 
induce cravings for the shedding of blood and for promiscu- 
ous sexual intercourse; and the chief sacrifice which was de- 
manded of men at this stage of the religious development 
was the ruthless satisfaction of these cravings. Here we 
press hard on one of the most important of the many cur- 
rent fallacies of modern thought. It is very generally as- 
sumed at the present day that humanity has inherited its 
great combative and sexual passions from its brute ances- 
try. In all modern literature, whether philosophical, scien- 
tific, religious, or general, this is taken for granted. Now 
it could be easily shown that nothing equivalent to the great 
passions of humanity occurs in those habits and tendencies 
of the brute which have suggested the idea; but it is not 


236 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

necessary to discuss this relationship in order to show that 
the assumption is entirely wrong. Whatever humanity may 
have inherited from the brute, it is quite certain that we have 
not inherited the great passions from the earliest men of 
whom we possess historical knowledge, and whom we defi- 
nitely know to have been amongst the first affected by that 
great wave of development which, after many thousands of 
years, has lifted us up to our present state. It is certain 
now that these great passions, scarcely present at all in the 
earliest historical peoples, became stronger in each successive 
stage of the developmental process until the human being, 
inflamed by their lust and fire, became totally different in 
character from the quiet and somewhat vegetative creature 
that he had formerly been. These great passions began to 
appear from the very moment that the religous conscious- 
ness commenced its development, but they did not attain to 
their full growth and become so powerful as entirely to 
destroy the older character of the individual and the older 
civilisation, until the fourth stage of the development of the 
religious idea had been reached. They were not, therefore, 
in any sense the effect of an inheritance from a brute ances- 
try, but were altogether and integrally resultants of the 
consciousness of things divine, and of the obligations which 
this consciousness imposed on the individual. In order 
to worship these gods, men had to shed human blood — 
preferably the blood of strange and alien males — and pro- 
vide human victims for sacrifice. Thus they became great 
warriors, for the shedding of blood was an efficient sacri- 
fice although not performed within the precincts of a temple; 
and whilst thus engaged they were necessarily wrapped up 
in that subjective mental attitude which the religious con- 
sciousness induced, and became heroically insensible to the 
dangers and risks they incurred, as well as utterly callous to 


FOURTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 237 

the sufferings which they inflicted on others. And in the 
same way, in order to worship these gods properly, men had 
to indulge freely in sexual intercourse of a promiscuous 
kind, which enabled them to fertilise especially strange 
women. The monstrous immorality which this impulse en- 
gendered has already been referred to, and need not be fur- 
ther described in detail. But what I want the reader par- 
ticularly to notice is, that it was an impulse that drove men 
specially towards women who were strange and unknown; 
women who, because they had something mysterious and un- 
known about them, were capable of fascinating and stimu- 
lating their religious consciousness. The essential thing in 
the revolting custom witnessed by Herodotus was that the 
act could not be consummated by previous arrangement 
among acquaintances, but had to be left to the impulse of 
a stranger. 

It is perfectly clear, therefore, from the historical perspec- 
tive of evolution that we now possess, that humanity re- 
ceived its great passions from the gods themselves; or, rather, 
from that consciousness of things divine which, in certain 
phases of its development, embodied itself in the figures 
of these gods. Nor is there anything extraordinary in this 
relationship, which modern thought has so completely failed 
to grasp, from the point of view presented to the reader in 
this work. For, from this point of view, the religious con- 
sciousness is the expression of the life of an organism which, 
like every other organism, must fulfil its own existence. It 
cannot do this unless it is afforded the opportunity of propa- 
gating itself through, not merely a series of individuals, but 
through a succession of Racial movements. It cannot do 
this, therefore, without imposing on the individual a pro- 
creative impulse, which is peculiar to the necessities of its 
own existence, and is radically different from that imposed 


238 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

on the individual by the Racial organism. Furthermore, 
it cannot do this and at the same time safeguard the devel- 
opment of the successive growths through which it propa- 
gates itself, unless it fits the individual with the instincts of 
a warrior; making him ready to break down, with ruthless 
violence, all obstacles to the supreme purpose of which he 
has become the instrument. It cannot fulfil its existence, 
therefore, without imposing on the individual a specific com- 
bative impulse, specially adapted for its own requirements, 
and differing widely from that imposed by the Racial organ- 
ism for the protection of the civilised community which it 
has brought into being. And if we examine for a moment 
the nature of the great human passions, and obtain a clear 
view of their essential characters by comparing them with 
the similar qualities of Racial origin, we shall see at once 
that these essential characters are just such as to make the 
individual an efficient instrument in the work of destroying 
the males and fertilising the females of alien races, which is 
absolutely necessary for the fulfilment of the existence of the 
Generic Organism. 

In the Racial process, the unity of the motive power 
expresses itself at once and directly throughout the whole 
of the single movement which it generates; and the obliga- 
tions which it imposes on the individual are necessarily such 
as to fit him for the civilised state of existence which en- 
ables a great mass of human beings to live together as one 
corporate body. It is absolutely necessary for the purposes 
of the Racial organism that men should be constrained to 
have offspring; but the object is attained in such a manner 
as in no way to prejudice the civilised state of existence in 
which the Racial organism naturally expresses its unity. 
The procreative impulse, in this case, is imposed by a con- 
sciousness of things which makes immediately for civilisa- 


FOURTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 239 

tion ; it is, therefore, in the very essence of its nature an im- 
pulse which embraces and upholds, at the very moment of 
its operation, all the social amenities of a civilised state 
of existence; and it is paralysed at once by anything in 
itself, or the circumstances it gives rise to, that threatens 
these amenities. It inspires a sexual attraction which is 
founded on knowledge and the recognition of assured quali- 
ties; which is offended and inhibited by the sense of the 
mysterious and the unknown; and which unavoidably gen- 
erates the feelings of human sympathy and the desire to 
deal equitably that are fundamental in the moral disposi- 
tion necessary for the civilised state of existence. In short, 
in the Racial process, the procreative impulse takes the form 
of a conjugal affection that demands for its satisfaction the 
permanent union, which is sanctioned and safeguarded by 
the social instincts of every civilised community in the insti- 
tution of marriage; and it allows of such a union only be- 
tween two people well assured of each other’s character and 
disposition; so that whilst it would utterly prevent mating 
with the foreigner and alien, and restrict it to people of the 
same Race, it would encourage union within the community 
between those most nearly related. It is well-known that, 
in the early days of this great growth of humanity which we 
are at present considering, marriages between even brothers 
and sisters were frequent; and the compulsory marriage of 
cousins is a custom which has survived to the present day in 
many Eastern nations. 

Rut for the purpose of the Generic Organism the mating 
of individuals belonging to the same Race is of no use; it 
is absolutely necessary that individuals belonging to alien 
Races should be driven to fertilise each other, in spite of all 
the antipathies, and even the hostility, which may separate 
one Race from the other; for only this mating of alien Races 


240 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

can give birth to the new Racial movements on which the 
continuity of the Generic process depends. And this su- 
preme necessity makes it imperative that the procreative 
impulse which is going to serve the purpose of the Generic 
Organism should be of such a character as not* merely to 
blind the individual to incompatibilities of temperament 
and habit, but should actually drive him towards the 
woman who is absolutely strange and mysterious to him in 
herself, her origin, and her surroundings; and drive him 
towards her so ruthlessly as to render neither the difficulties 
of the undertaking, nor the social disturbances likely to arise 
from it, nor the unsuitability of the woman as a companion, 
nor even her personal resistance of the slightest 
avail in moderating and extinguishing the impulse. Now 
the procreative impulse which embodies itself in the sexual 
passion possesses just these necessary characters. For it is 
of the very essence of passion that it drives a man towards 
the woman who is mysterious and unknown to him; whilst 
it is at once paralysed by assured knowledge and familiar- 
ity. It is, in this process, the very mystery about a woman 
that evokes in a man the imperious longing to possess her; 
and this longing at once tends to obliterate both the real 
perception of the woman, her character, and her status, as 
well as the danger and disturbance both to himself and to 
others which may attend her pursuit, in order that noth- 
ing may stand in the way of its consummation. But, 
furthermore, passion is notoriously ruthless in its oper- 
ation ; it does not generate as part of itself either the desire 
or the obligation to deal equitably. What it does generate 
is purely and simply an impulse of adoration which oblit- 
erates everything objective in one supreme ecstasy of sexual 
desire. The moment this desire is satisfied; as soon as fa- 
miliarity with the woman vulgarises his conception of her, 


FOURTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 241 

and destroys everything about her that tended to render her 
mysterious, and thus caused her to become the object of a 
divine impulsion; then passion at once dies, and leaves the 
man perfectly free to forget even that the woman ever ex- 
isted. Thus the driving power of passion is not restrained 
by any* solicitude for the happiness of its victim; and the 
inspired individual is thereby enabled to carry out the pur- 
pose of the Generic Organism efficiently, without burdening 
his shoulders with too great an accumulation of responsibil- 
ities. 

The Racial process again naturally makes the individual 
a defender of the civilisation which it creates. It does not 
affect him so as to make him take a joy in the mere act of 
fighting; on the contrary, since the less the members of a 
community are apt to quarrel, the greater is its solidarity, 
it rather shapes his character so that he is with very great 
difficulty aroused to anger; and the idea of fighting, in 
itself, is abhorrent to him. But at the same time it inspires 
in him an imperious instinct of protection and defence ; and 
when the community to which he belongs is threatened, or 
any of its members, or the principles of right and wrong 
on which the civilisation is based, this imperious instinct 
arouses in him a readiness to fight; and he sacrifices his life, 
if necessary, for the preservation of those things which are 
more important to the Racial instinct than his own exist- 
ence. Thus to a certain point the Racial process makes the 
individual capable of fighting. It blurs, or entirely de- 
stroys, that sense of self-preservation which might render 
him a coward, incapable of resisting any danger that is not 
threatening his own individual life; and thus makes him an 
efficient instrument for the defence and maintenance of the 
civilised mode of existence, which is the expression of the 
unity of the Racial process. But this habit of mind does 


242 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

not render him aggressively hostile to anything that is alien 
or outside his own civilisation. 

But for the purpose of the Generic Organism, the mere 
defence of a community or civilisation was of no use. It 
was absolutely necessary for its purposes that the new 
growth of humanity which it brought into being should be 
able to spread and establish itself on the face of the earth, 
and should be able to do those things which were necessary 
for the due fulfilment of the life of the Generic Organism 
without being hindered by the resistance of the peoples who 
did not acknowledge these obligations. It was absolutely 
necessary, therefore, for the purposes of the Generic Organ- 
ism that this new growth of humanity should make itself 
predominant in the world, and should suppress and destroy 
everything that tended to interfere with that predominance. 
For its purpose, therefore, it was essential that the indi- 
vidual should be so constituted that the sight of one belong- 
ing to an alien community filled him with an imperious 
desire to destroy, or at least to subjugate, that individual. 
And this was exactly the character of the divine impulsion 
that reared itself up in the individual every time that he 
yielded himself to the constraining influences of the re- 
ligious consciousness, and worshipped the later Babylonian 
and Assyrian deities. For these deities were all war-gods; 
even Ishtar — the tenderest of that terrible company, and 
the embodiment of that sexual lust which at first sight ap- 
pears to wear a softer complexion — was equally inflamed 
with the destructive passion; and no one who did not yield 
to this divine impulsion and did not so tune his mind that 
it could thoroughly possess him and drive him into furious 
activity at every provocation, could in the least hope to 
obtain their favours. It endowed him with a passion that 
imperiously demanded the recognition of the supremacy of 


FOURTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 243 

his own individuality and his own Race, and drove him 
joyfully into combat whenever that supremacy was ques- 
tioned. In the conflict with his enemy it filled him with 
such ecstasies that fighting in itself became one of the chief 
avenues through which he might attain to the joys of para- 
dise; an avenue not inferior in value to those afforded him 
by the act of worship and the satisfaction of the twin sexual 
impulse. It roused him, at the very moment that it drove 
him along in its overwhelming flood, into a subjective phase 
of consciousness which obliterated in him all fear, and ren- 
dered him, as well, utterly callous to those feelings of hu- 
manity that the civilised instinct might impose on him. It 
drowned the sense of his own danger and discomfort in a 
relish for the sufferings of others, so monstrous that they, 
above all other sensations, might cause every fibre of his 
being to palpitate with a fierce and exultant vitality. In 
short, it converted the individual into a warrior, the whole 
business of whose life it was to exterminate the males of 
alien races, or so to subjugate them that they might offer no 
resistance to his using their women in the service of his gods. 

Nothing more need be said to prove my point that these 
great passions were eminently fitted to subserve the purpose 
of the existence of the Generic Organism, and the fact that 
they were imposed on the individual by the religious con- 
sciousness is therefore not a matter to be wondered at. It 
is easy enough to see that the great passions thus infused 
into the character of individuals by the Generic Organism, 
which made them such good instruments for the purposes of 
that organism, must necessarily spoil their capacity for civ- 
ilisation. In the earlier stages of the Generic process, they 
would become filled with a turbulent egotism that naturally 
made for savagery, and not for civilisation; and its intensity 
would be such that the civilising influence of each Racial 


244 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

movement would not be sufficient to keep it in bounds. 
Even in the civilised nations of antiquity, where there ex- 
isted solid social organisations inherited from the past, the 
Generic passions could not fail to start a drift towards social 
chaos and barbarism, which would increase in each succes- 
sive stage of the developmental process. In those masses 
of individuals who moved away from the centres of civilisa- 
tion, the trend would be towards savagery pure and simple. 

It is clear at once that these great passions would enor- 
mously increase the tendency to wander about which I have 
already noticed as resulting from the religious consciousness 
in its second stage of development. To the impulse of find- 
ing new places in which to worship was now added the 
fiercer hunger for the possession of strange women and the 
destruction of alien males. In the fixed and civilised so- 
cieties these cravings could not be adequately appeased, and 
the result was those great migrations which spread away 
from Central Asia into Europe, and which destroyed the 
civilised mode of existence wherever it had previously ex- 
isted, and covered that Continent with ruthless savages who 
were only governed by force, and were only held together 
by those family bonds which, as I have already said, spring 
from the state of mind in which ancestor worship has its 
origin. Instead of existing as nations, these wandering 
peoples became clans or tribes bound together by the wor- 
ship of a common ancestor, or of a common chief, or of a 
common totem. Every individual belonging to one of 
these clans had to mould himself into one uniform pattern, 
and exhibit that pattern in every circumstance of his life 
and his appearance. Any divergence from this established 
uniformity might provoke the hostility ingrained in the in- 
dividual to everything alien in the male, or excite the sexual 
passion which tended to flame up at the sight of anything 


FOURTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 245 

strange in the female, and might thus endanger the solidarity 
and cohesion of the tribe. That the migrations of peo- 
ples which finally covered the whole of Europe did occur 
mostly at this period is proved by the fact that the gods 
of all the European barbarians, and even those of the Greeks 
and Romans, belonged to this stage of the religious devel- 
opment. 

The fact that the object of these religious impulses was 
primarily that which was alien and mysterious gave rise 
to some strange developments in human nature as well as 
in the religious customs of those days. Everything that 
was sufficiently mysterious to arouse in him a divine im- 
pulse was necessarily regarded by the individual as divine 
itself. There was thus an overwhelming tendency to re- 
gard the very men he was seeking to destroy, and the very 
women he was seeking to violate, as divinities, and to wor- 
ship them, and to behave to them as if they possessed that 
character. That a man who is passionately in love with 
a woman regards her as a divinity, although he may at the 
same time be absolutely callous to the injury with which his 
passion threatens her, is a matter of common knowledge; 
and we know, as a matter of fact, that the men of those 
days regarded as sacred and divine the courtesans who min- 
istered to their passions. In the same way, the man who 
prepared for mortal combat with an enemy whose blood 
he was determined to have, nevertheless felt inclined to 
treat him with considerable respect and consideration ; thus 
have arisen what we call the chivalrous feelings of the 
warrior. This mental attitude, which is one of the great- 
est contradictions in human nature, is thus easily explained 
from our point of view, and it gave rise in those days to 
religious customs connected with sacrifice which have 
puzzled every student of comparative religion. The hu- 


246 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

man being or the animal that was to be sacrificed might 
be treated as a god, and worshipped as such, up to the very 
day of the sacrifice; and the flesh and blood of the victim 
would be devoured by the worshippers in the full belief 
that they were feeding on something that was really divine 
and would fill them with the transcendent spirit of the gods. 

The great wave of hate and lust that swept over hu- 
manity at the urgent inspiration of the gods was absolutely 
incompatible with the amenities, the harmony, and the 
morality which had been hitherto characteristic of human 
relations, and the older civilisation vanished as completely 
as if it had been overwhelmed by some universally destruc- 
tive agent. Only enough remained to give birth to a new 
order of things, and to hold together in some kind of social 
existence a new Race of men whose natures had been so 
tempered in the fiery furnace of religious exaltation that 
they could stand, without withering away, the rigorous dis- 
cipline that the worship of the gods imposed on them. 
This disastrous effect of the passions of the gods on hu- 
manity is dramatically represented in the old Babylonian 
myth of the Flood, which is the original of the correspond- 
ing story in Genesis. The comparison of the two stories is 
chiefly interesting because it shows us how easily we might 
be misled by the terms used in these self-revelations of the 
religious consciousness, if we did not constantly bear in mind 
the special mental attitude and point of view characteristic 
of the several stages of its development. Both stories in- 
dicate a destruction of humanity because of its sins; but 
the acts that are specifically mentioned as sinful in Genesis 
are the very ones which the Babylonian gods rendered ob- 
ligatory on the individuals who worshipped them. The 
Babylonian myth means that the divine anger was aroused, 
not because men were too vicious, but because they were 


FOURTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 247 

not vicious enough to abandon themselves completely to 
the requirements of the gods. 

It was because the constant exercise of the great passions 
was so ruthlessly enforced by his religious consciousness that 
the Babylonian was kept bound to the material and ex- 
ternal world, in which alone they could be satisfied; and 
all his conceptions of the gods remained gross and mate- 
rial in spite of the fact that they appeared so great and re- 
mote from him, or were such incarnations of mystery. In 
the very graphic portraiture of the Flood myth, they are 
said to cower like dogs in terror of the storm they had 
aroused, and to swarm like flies in greedy anticipation of 
the sacrifice that the prototype of Noah was preparing for 
them. The mystery incarnate in these gods, indeed, was 
primarily the mystery of that which is terrible, and not the 
mystery of that which is spiritual. In other words, the 
material element in the divine presentation at this stage of 
the religious development was still largely represented in 
consciousness, and in worshipping them in the form of idols 
there was nothing incongruous to the mind of the individ- 
ual. These idols represented them as men and women of 
massively grotesque and horrible features, or as some fe- 
rocious and erotic animal, such as a bull, whose nature was 
in some measure identical with their own. But this pre- 
ponderating influence of the passionate and material ele- 
ment in the Babylonian religion must not blind us to the 
fact that it possessed another side, in which transcendental- 
ism and mysticism reigned supreme, and were, indeed, very 
much more strongly marked than they had been in the third 
stage. This transcendental element revealed itself in the 
astral theology which made the Babylonians such famous 
astrologists, and gave rise in the religious consciousness to 
certain conceptions which had never before revealed them- 


2 4 B the significance of ancient religions 

selves. We have already seen that they identified their 
gods principally with the stars. Their attention was there- 
fore fixed on the movement and the behaviour of these 
stars, and the study of astronomy became for them the chief 
source of their knowledge. Since the gods who determined 
everything on earth were identified with the stars, the move- 
ment and behaviour of the stars revealed in some measure 
the intention of the gods with regard to everything that 
existed on earth. Thus it came to be believed that the stars 
determined the course of events, and the destiny of every- 
thing, and especially of every man who was endowed with 
the divine element, was specifically determined by an astral 
influence. But the Babylonians very soon became con- 
scious of the fact that the movements of the stars are not 
capricious, but are regular and rhythmic, following an order 
which is fixed and unchangeable throughout all the ages. 
Hence it appeared that behind the capricious power of the 
gods there existed a fixed astral influence which played a 
large share in determining the destiny of each individual, 
and which was not capable of being affected in the least 
by his prayers and by his sacrifice. In other words, the 
power of Fate checked and neutralised in some measure the 
capricious power of the gods. The gods responded to 
prayer and sacrifice, but the individual who happened to 
be born under an unfortunate astral influence had to be 
very assiduous in his worship if he were to succeed in en- 
dowing his gods with sufficient strength to combat the de- 
crees of destiny. 

In other words, there had already arisen in the Baby- 
lonian religious Consciousness the ill-defined suggestion of 
a transcendental power that was independent of, if not al- 
together hostile to, that of the material gods. It is nec- 
essary that the reader should bear this in mind, otherwise he 


FOURTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 249 

might imagine that a great and impassable gulf separates 
this stage of the religious development from that which 
immediately succeeded it, wherein the transcendental ele- 
ment became so pronounced that it compelled the indi- 
vidual’s allegiance to gods that were wholly spiritual. 
There is no such gulf. The Babylonians stand at the point 
where, in the course of the development, the material and 
objective element in the divine presentation was becoming 
much weaker, but indirectly enormously reinforced and 
strengthened by the grip of the passions, whilst the sub- 
jective and spiritual element was getting relatively 
stronger, but was not yet in itself sufficiently strong to com- 
pletely divorce itself from the material element thus re- 
inforced. It was this transitional state of things in the 
religious consciousness that determined the Babylonian con- 
ception of a future life. The gods were immortal, and 
great and vigorous in their immortality; but so far as he 
was himself concerned, the prospect of a future life was 
neither very clear nor very alluring to the individual. 
The material element in his religious consciousness was so 
weak that he could scarcely believe in the material eternity 
which was so great a reality to the early dynastic Egyp- 
tians. In contrast to the fiercer energies and the full- 
bodied raptures which the passions had infused into his 
terrestrial existence, and which depended so much for their 
full realisation on the service of a powerful and vigorous 
physical organisation, the joys of a future state of ex- 
istence — which, even if it were not a completely disem- 
bodied one, must yet be carried out by a body enfeebled to 
the last degree by death — did not appeal to him. On the 
other hand, the subjective element in the religious con- 
sciousness was not sufficiently free and supreme to enable 
him to realise in all its fulness that conception of a spirit- 


250 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

ual eternity which became the preponderant element 
in the Persian and Indian religions. The belief in 
eternity is, therefore, but faintly signalised in this phase 
of the religious development. The Babylonian, indeed, 
believed in the future life, but the abode of the dead was a 
desolate and miserable place, and the disembodied spirits 
that haunted it were not represented as enjoying their con- 
dition. The earlier conceptions of the future life, and all 
the myths that were connected with them, disappeared al- 
most entirely under the influence of this new state of mind ; 
and we seek in vain amongst the ruins of Mesopotamia 
for those great structures for the preservation of the dead 
which are so characteristic a feature of Egypt. 

All the earlier classes of supernatural beings were fully 
represented in that vast company of the gods that was pre- 
sided over by the terrible ones. There were multitudes of 
demons, a smaller number of good spirits, and a select few 
like the good-natured Ea, who perpetuated in themselves 
the attitude of the sun-gods of the third stage. But as the 
supreme gods were now in themselves so terrible and ill- 
disposed towards men, the demons necessarily regained 
their ancient liberty. Freed from the underworld into 
which they had been securely locked by the higher gods in 
the third stage of the development, they now became as 
powerful, as universally present, and as malignant as in 
the very first stage. They were indeed the satellites of the 
great gods; they supported the thrones of the mighty ones, 
and were the dreaded ministers of their vengeance. But 
beyond this they had a free hand to indulge to the full 
their evil propensities against all those, at any rate, who 
were not so bad in themselves as to merit the special pro- 
tection of Bel and his foul and ferocious consorts. To pro- 
tect themselves, men applied themselves assiduously to the 


FOURTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 251 

resources of witchcraft and sorcery. These practices, 
which had been slowly growing throughout the whole of 
the religious development, insinuating themselves into 
every crevice of human life and thought, underwent a 
great development at this period; and the inclusion in the 
worship of the great gods of some of the most offensive 
and abhorrent practices associated with demon-worship, 
rendered it a hot-bed of influences that tended inevitably 
to disorganise and obliterate civilisation, and to substitute 
for it the lowest and vilest forms of savagery. 

Before leaving this phase, I must notice briefly the de- 
velopment of the original passion worship of the Baby- 
lonians into the form it assumed in the cults of those 
later goddesses which are typified in Cybele. The cult of 
Cybele was transferred to Rome about 200 years before 
the Christian Era commences, and it became one of the 
chief forms of worship which the Romans used and adapted 
to embody their own religious consciousness. The clear 
understanding of this development is, therefore, not only 
interesting in itself as indicating the line of progression in 
religious ideas, but it is also necessary to enable us to fol- 
low intelligently that great transmutation of religious 
thought in the Roman world which has so largely influ- 
enced the religious development in the Modern period. 

I have said that in the original passion worship of the 
Babylonians, the part played by women was as great and 
as honourable as that of men. In the exercise of these 
divine functions they were treated as divine beings, and no 
taint of dishonour attached to the vocation. The numbers 
of the sacred courtesans were recruited not from the scum 
of the female population, but from the highest-born, the 
best, and the wealthiest. The daughters of princes and 


252 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

kings frequently spent a portion of their lives in the per- 
formance of this sacred office, and in some cults this con- 
dition of things must have persisted to a very late period 
in human history, for Philip of Macedon first met the 
mother of Alexander the Great, who was a princess, whilst 
she was thus engaged. 

But in other cults, a very different tendency soon mani- 
fested itself, which was the natural result of the relative 
position of the two sexes in the evolutionary process. As 
I have already said, in this process man was the develop- 
ing creature and not woman ; but in the preceding phase of 
Generic development, she had been the developing crea- 
ture, and the Palseogynic mind-organ was therefore most 
strongly developed in her. Thus, because of the strength 
of her inheritance from the past, the woman was a drag 
to the development of the religious consciousness. The 
Palseogynic mind-organ was most highly developed in her, 
and she was the chief embodiment and representative of 
the old order of things that had to be destroyed and ob- 
literated before the new order of things could establish it- 
self. At a very early period, therefore, there arose a 
tendency in the turbulent egotism aroused in man by the 
religious development to suppress her, and to treat her as an 
inferior; and finally all appreciation of her worth was oblit- 
erated by the envenomed feelings that the purer pagan reli- 
gions of later times engendered in men towards those who 
were at once the cause and the victims of their passions. 
A strong disposition arose in men to regard women as es- 
sentially malignant creatures, contact with whom de- 
graded them and prevented them from entering into the 
presence of the higher gods. This feeling that women 
were essentially unworthy to take part in the worship of 
the gods had two necessary results. In the first place, it 


FOURTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 253 

engendered the idea that chastity in a woman might repre- 
sent the most worthy condition in which she could approach 
the divine presence. For her chastity was the recognition 
of the fact that she was not fit to perform the functions 
that were demanded of men, and a willingness on her part 
to occupy a subsidiary position in the worship of the gods; 
thus freeing men from a drag which prevented them from 
rising to the highest possible levels of religious fervour. 
The chastity of women therefore became commendable 
and meritorious in a religious sense at the very same time 
that the religious consciousness enforced the most out- 
rageous unchastity on the man. That this is so we know 
from the fact that even in Babylonian times there came 
to exist in the worship of the temples a class of women on 
whom chastity was rendered obligatory. Their position 
was assured and confirmed by special laws; but the reader 
must remember that this public recognition and appreci- 
ation of purity in women was not the result of any high 
estimate of their character. It was, on the contrary, the 
result of an estimate of their character which degraded 
them below the level assumed by men. In the second 
place, this feeling led to the women who still continued to 
prostitute themselves in religious worship receiving treat- 
ment very different from that which was their due in ear- 
lier times. Thus, exposed without defence to the cruelty 
which is inherent in passion, it was natural that all women 
who could avoid the obligation should do so, and in later 
times, amongst the cults which still made the prostitution 
of women a necessary and integral part of the worship, it 
was found necessary to recruit them from slaves or low- 
class women who could be allured to the sacrifice by pros- 
pects of material gain. But in some of these cults, the 
use of women was dispensed with altogether, although 


254 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

they still remained sexual in character. It was this form 
of worship that was typified in the cult of Cybele. In the 
great myth of which she is the central figure, she has a 
lover, Attis, of whom she is inordinately jealous. In one 
variant of the myth she mutilates him so that he cannot 
have access to other women; in the other, she causes him 
to be killed out of jealousy; but the essential meaning 
of both variants is the same. It is this: that she will not 
allow her lover to have anything to do with women. But 
the orgies in the midst of which she was worshipped were 
wholly of a sexual character, in spite of the fact that the 
enthusiasm aroused when it attained to its highest pitch 
of intensity often led to acts of self-mutilation on the part 
of her worshippers. The worship of Cybele may have be- 
come more or less freed from this element when it was 
transferred to Rome; it was certainly never a pure wor- 
ship in Asia. On the contrary, it was just that form of 
sexual worship wherein, as the natural result of the con- 
ditions imposed on the worshippers, the most abominable 
and unnatural forms of sexual perversion were fostered and 
practised under the overwhelming force of a divine im- 
pulsion. 


CHAPTER VIII 


FIFTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 

The fifth stage of the development brings us to the re- 
ligion of the Persian Aryans. In this system two sep- 
arate and hostile sets of deities, of approximately equal 
power and importance, claim the allegiance of the indi- 
vidual. In the background of the picture of the times 
set before us in the early parts of the Zend-Avesta, we see 
the people divided between two opposing and hostile cults, 
the watchwords of which are Ahura on the one hand, and 
Dseva on the other. The opposing parties are not sep- 
arated by distance in space or by differing nationality, but 
occur side by side; and the entire community seems broken 
up by the difference between the two sets of gods. 

The difference in the nature of these two sets of gods 
reveals itself clearly the moment we consider the essential 
significance of the two words Ahura and Dseva. The 
Aryans applied the word Dseva to all divine presentations, 
whether they were malignant or whether they were be- 
nevolent, that were intimately associated originally with the 
objects and processes of nature. The word signifies “the 
shining or brilliant ones.” It implies that the moment the 
divine presentation made its appearance, there occurred a 
great psychic illumination in the consciousness of the in- 
dividual, but it also implies that the gods thus visualised 
had a strong material personality. Now the word Ahura 
implies a divinity which is entirely ethereal, and has no 
material personality whatever. The older gods had al- 
ways been worshipped in the form of idols, but this mate- 
255 


256 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

rial embodiment of the divine presentation was an affront 
to the religious consciousness which revealed to the indi- 
vidual the Ahura, and no images were ever made of the 
spiritual gods of the Persians; they were also never wor- 
shipped in temples, but always in the wild and open spaces 
of nature. 

In other words, the subjective change which started the 
process of religious ideation in the individual had, at this 
stage, progressed so far that it gave rise to a new class of 
divine presentations, in which the material element of ear- 
lier times was completely absent, and which were there- 
fore purely subjective in character. The Generic growth, 
having become much stronger and more firmly established, 
induced a tendency in the religious consciousness to draw 
away the individual from the material world; and the con- 
flict betwixt this tendency and that which is antagonistic 
to it entirely dominates the situation, and is the chief thing 
which is presented in the divine presentation. In the pre- 
ceding stage, obligations had been imposed on the indi- 
vidual which exercised to the full his objective faculties 
and his physical organisation, and chained him to the ex- 
ternal world. The religious consciousness had thus enor- 
mously increased the resistive power of the Palseogynic 
mind-organ; and this rendered it extremely difficult for 
the individual to rise to the level of abstraction which the 
further growth of the Neo-andric ganglia compelled him 
to crave for. The difficulties that the Neo-andric ganglia 
had to cope with were enormously greater than those which 
existed before the great growth of passion had attained 
to its full maturity. For then, because they were by vir- 
tue of their virginal condition capable of so much greater 
an illumination of consciousness than the Palseogynic 
ganglia, they easily suppressed the latter, with the result 


FIFTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 257 

that the individual rose readily into the state of mind 
which was compatible with the growth of the religious con- 
sciousness. But now the matter had become very differ- 
ent. Now the Neo-andric ganglia had to cope not only 
with the energy of the Palseogynic mind-elements, but with 
the effects of impulses which were actually created by the 
Neo-andric ganglia themselves, and which possessed all the 
virginal energy of these elements. The Generic growth 
had to fight a battle now against a resistance which it had 
itself created, and which it had endowed with the enor- 
mous powers of its own being. The fight was no longer 
between the supernatural and the natural, but between a 
tendency in the supernatural to realise itself most per- 
fectly, and a tendency of the supernatural, which was 
scarcely less strong, to prevent that realisation; and in this 
conflict the latter tendency was so constantly reinforced 
by the reaction of the external world on the individual 
that the two tendencies were pretty well equipoised. In 
order to realise and worship the Ahura, the individual had 
to detach himself from nature, blind himself to the reali- 
ties of the external world, and become purely subjective, 
wrapped up in the innermost paradise of a religious ec- 
stasy. But this independent subjectivity of the religious 
consciousness was not yet sufficiently developed to bring 
the whole mass of the people, nor even the whole nature 
of the individual, completely under the sway of the new 
presentation. It was a period of strife in the religious con- 
sciousness itself, giving rise at one and the same time to 
two sets of deities almost equally powerful and permanently 
incompatible with each other. 

It was this dualism of the religious consciousness that 
is expressed in the Zoroastrian mythology embodied in the 
Zend-Avesta. As he was himself full to overflowing with 


258 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

the spiritual self-exaltation induced in the individual by 
the new faith, Zoroaster necessarily considered that every- 
thing that induced in the individual the mental attitude 
necessary to realise and to worship the Ahura was good; 
everything, on the other hand, that tended to induce in 
the individual the mental attitude associated with the wor- 
ship of the Daeva was bad. He personified the two in- 
fluences which thus operated on human beings into two 
great deities — Ahura-mazda and Ahriman — to whom all 
the good and all the evil in the universe were respectively 
attributed. And as the impulse to worship was neces- 
sarily identified with the object of worship, the whole of 
the two classes of deities became respectively embodied in 
the all-embracing figures of these two great gods, who were 
equally powerful, equally divine, and eternally opposed 
to each other. The material universe was the result as 
well as the scene of the great conflict; but it had to be 
fought out principally in the religious consciousness of man. 
Man alone was capable of providing the sacrifice which 
could determine the ultimate triumph of Ahura-mazda; 
and this was the purpose of his existence. The sacrifice 
demanded of him was a complete surrender to the obliga- 
tions imposed on him by the worship of Ahura-mazda. 
If he were assiduous in performing the rites and ceremonies 
of this worship, if he fought against those who were un- 
der the influence of the Daeva and suppressed in himself 
every impulse that was inspired by Ahriman and prevented 
him from attaining a state of mind in which he could real- 
ise the Ahura, he thereby increased the power of Ahura- 
mazda; but if, on the other hand, he neglected the sacrifice 
and ceremonies, made friends of the Daeva worshippers, 
or surrendered himself to the impulses that spring from 
this worship, he increased thereby the power of Ahriman. 


FIFTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 259 

In spite of the overwhelming power of Ahriman in the 
material world, which was bound to cause much suffering 
to the faithful, the individual might, by withdrawing his 
attention from the external world and absorbing himself 
in the thought of Ahura-mazda, obtain some happiness 
during his earthly life. But his chief reward was to come 
after death, in the future life in which Ahura-mazda 
reigned supreme. If he had a balance of good works in 
his favour at the time of death, he passed forthwith into 
Paradise and the blessed life. If his evil works out- 
weighed his good, he fell finally into the power of Ahri- 
man, and the pains of hell became his portion for ever. 
Should the evil and good be equally balanced, his soul 
passed into an intermediate state of existence, and its final 
lot was not decided until the last judgment. This last 
judgment was to take place at the end of the world, when 
the triumph of Ahura-mazda would become complete, and 
when he would judge all mankind strictly according to 
justice, punish the wicked, and assign to the good the 
hoped-for reward. Ahriman would then be cast, along 
with all those who had been delivered over to him to suf- 
fer the pains of hell, into the abyss, where he would thence- 
forth lie powerless; and after this would be established 
the good kingdom wherein Ahura-mazda would reign alone. 

The blissful inspiration which was the result of com- 
munion with Ahura-mazda could only be attained by the 
individual by living the life of a recluse, separating him- 
self in the remote spaces of nature from humanity and 
from all earthly interests. This mode of existence was 
therefore incumbent on those who aspired to teach the peo- 
ple in religious matters. The tendency of the new phase 
of the religious consciousness was therefore to draw the in- 
dividual away from the grip of the terrestrial world. Be- 


260 the significance of ancient religions 

cause of this the passions were condemned, for as it was 
only in the external world that the cravings engendered by 
the passions could be satisfied, their inevitable tendency 
was to exercise to the full the objective faculties and the 
physical organisation of the individual, and to chain him 
to the external world, and thus render impossible that 
state of mental abstraction in which alone Ahura-mazda 
could be realised. And as it was the unrestrained play 
of the passions which had dislocated the civilised relations 
on which the material happiness of humanity entirely de- 
pends, this condemnation invests the Zoroastrian system 
with what is at first sight an ethical tendency of a modern 
and Christian character. For as a corollary to this con- 
demnation, an attitude of friendliness and consideration in 
human relations was extolled, which to the casual observer 
might make it almost appear that the general impulse 
which the religious consciousness had generated was one 
directed to the amelioration of the material condition of 
humanity. But in view of the violent and successful op- 
position of Ahriman to Ahura-mazda in the material world, 
the realisation of that complete state of mental abstraction 
was, for the Persians, an ideal relegated to the future life, 
and only to be sought for in this world by those who 
were specially inspired to become religious teachers. It 
was not a state that the great mass of the people were to 
attempt to realise. It was more important for them, in 
order . that they should make the ultimate triumph of 
Ahura-mazda a certainty, that they should constantly wage 
a bitter and endless warfare with the worshippers of the 
Daevas, and it was an impulse of this character which 
really sprang from the religious consciousness at this stage 
of its development, and dominated all those who wor- 
shipped the spiritual gods of the Persians. It was an im- 


FIFTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 261 

pulse that necessarily inflamed the great passions to the 
highest possible extent, for what the individual had to do 
was to destroy a world that refused Ahura-mazda and re- 
produce a new world that would accept him as its god. 
The passions, it is true, were modified in their operation 
by the higher spiritual tendency of the Persians, but the 
modification in them thus produced was not of a character 
which made them any less terrible to humanity. On the 
contrary, it infused into them a venom which had hitherto 
been absent from them; for the vague and shadowy inter- 
dict that his religious consciousness laid on the passions 
was just sufficient to fill the Persian at the moment of their 
operation with a feeling of disgust. And this disgust ef- 
fectually killed those generous feelings which the passions 
themselves had hitherto generated towards their victims. 
To the violent cruelty of passion there was added in the 
Persian that bitter animosity of the religious sectarian, who 
sees in the victim of his hate or his lust, not a human be- 
ing, but an unclean fiend whom it is a sin to treat as he 
would be treated himself; and as the difference that sep- 
arated the Daeva worshipper from the Ahura worshipper 
was not one of Race or of nationality, but one which 
might exist between members of the same community 
or the same family, and indeed might arise simply 
as the result of a heated and perverted imagination, the 
modified passions of the Persian made him terrible, not 
only to the foreigner, but in as great a degree to those 
of his own nation or his own family even, who incurred 
his displeasure. In other words, the Persian religion was 
just as malignant in its general effect on the material hap- 
piness of humanity as any of those which had preceded it, 
if not more so. That this does not appear the case at first 
sight at the present day is simply due to the fact that the 


262 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

really old portions of the Zend-Avesta which we at present 
possess, constitute only a very small fraction, probably a 
twentieth or thirtieth part, of the original literature in 
which this religion expressed itself. Alexander the Great, 
when he conquered the Persians, made it his express busi- 
ness to destroy this literature, and as the Greeks did not 
usually indulge in such acts of vandalism, this wilful de- 
struction of what was so ancient and interesting strongly 
suggests that its character was one calculated to inflame and 
foster the fanatical and martial ardour which it was the 
object of the Greeks to destroy. And as the Zend-Avesta 
which has come down to us has been gradually built up 
from a few selected fragments of the original throughout 
long periods of time, during which the worshippers of 
Ahura-mazda have lived in a hopeless and pitiful state of 
subjection to other cults, it is easy enough to see that the 
only possibility for this compilation to survive would lie 
in its gradually assuming the character which it at present 
possesses. But the effect of the original literature on the 
historical civilisation of the ancient Persians shows clearly 
that it was capable of generating no impulse that made for 
the material happiness of humanity. The ancient Persians 
were not men addicted to lives of serene contemplation, 
nor were they in any way distinguished by their humanity 
and morality; on the contrary, they were a Race of restless 
warriors, and in their great and widespread conquests they 
exhibited a degree of indifference to the feelings of those 
whom they vanquished that was without precedent in the 
earlier historical periods. Their system of government 
was one of pure despotism and oppression, and in every 
human relation their civilisation compares badly even with 
that of the Babylonians. 

Indeed, although Zoroaster gave to Ahura-mazda the 


FIFTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT “263 

supreme position in the great fight with Ahriman, it is 
clear that the real god whom the historical Persians wor- 
shipped was Mithra. Before the time of Zoroaster, 
Mithra, the light of the heavens, had occupied amongst 
the Ahura gods a position equal to that of Ahura-mazda 
himself ; and that he rapidly regained his position as soon 
as the Zoroastrian wave of inspiration had spent itself is 
evident from the fact that in the inscriptions on the 
sepulchres of all the great Persian monarchs that are still 
in existence, we find Mithra treated as the equal of Ahura- 
mazda. Now in the early parts of the Avesta we find 
Mithra repeatedly invoked as a warlike and formidable 
deity, a god of battles, swift to assail and slay the ene- 
mies of truth and justice — which would naturally mean the 
enemies of his worshippers. And according to Herodotus, 
Mithra was in later times identified by the Persians with 
one of those notorious goddesses whom the Babylonians 
and Assyrians worshipped in a sexual manner. There is 
no doubt, therefore, that Mithra was originally an em- 
bodiment of the passions, but he differed from the corre- 
sponding gods of the Babylonians in that the passions 
aroused by his worship were not wanton impulses towards 
destruction and procreation, but were directed to the specific 
purpose of establishing on earth the kingdom of Ahura- 
mazda. The passions evoked by him were passions di- 
rected against the material gods and their worshippers, and 
towards the production of a new world in which Ahura- 
mazda could reign supreme. He was therefore the god on 
whose efforts the ultimate triumph of Ahura-mazda es- 
sentially depended, and as he was full of human feeling 
and human passions, he was nearer to the Persians and 
more cheerfully worshipped by them than the remote and 
mystical figure of Ahura-mazda. Constantly in the fore- 


264 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

front of the great battle against evil, he was therefore on 
the one side the chosen divine instrument of Ahura-mazda’ s 
will, and on the other side the saviour and redeemer of the 
pious humanity that longed to free itself from the clutches 
of Ahriman. In this way arose the conception of his be- 
ing the mediator between the offended Ahura-mazda and 
sinful humanity. By his own self-sacrifice and devotion, 
he washed away the sins of his worshippers and made them 
once more acceptable in the sight of Ahura-mazda. He 
is most commonly represented as slaying a bull, in which 
figure was probably typified the ferocious and erotic gods 
of the fourth stage, and bulls and rams constituted the 
chief sacrifice in the worship of Mithra. And as the thing 
sacrificed was identified with the thing worshipped, so this 
sacrifice came to typify the self-sacrifice of Mithra in the 
interests of humanity, and by sprinkling themselves with 
the blood, the devout worshippers believed they washed 
themselves free from all sin, and entered into the king- 
dom of Ahura-mazda. 

But it is clear that in these later manifestations, Mithra 
is no longer a true Ahura god. I have said that the es- 
sential thing about the Ahura gods was that they were not 
identified with anything material, and that they were not 
worshipped in the form of images. Now Mithra was cer- 
tainly worshipped by the historical Persians in the form 
of an image, and there is no doubt that he was actually 
identified with the sun itself. Moreover, Mithra is fre- 
quently represented as slaying a bull; and this animal was 
constantly sacrificed in his worship. Now in the times 
which the early parts of the Zend-Avesta mirror to us, it 
is clear that it was only the Daeva worshippers who sacri- 
ficed bulls and cows; and this difference was one of the 
great points in which the antagonism of the Ahura and 


FIFTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 265 

Daeva worship manifested itself. As the sacrifice of these 
animals was characteristic of Dseva-worship, it was ab- 
horrent to the Ahura- worshipper ; and thus arose that rev- 
erential attitude towards the cow which later on became so 
marked a feature of the Brahmin religion. In other words, 
Mithraism signalises a degradation of the idea originally 
embodied in Ahura-mazda. The recognition of this fact 
has two very important bearings. In the first place, it indi- 
cates that in the Persian Racial movement the inspiration 
which lifted the religious consciousness away from the ma- 
terial element in the divine presentation was still very 
weak; so that as soon as the specific wave of Racial in- 
spiration had spent itself, the Persians relapsed into wor- 
ship of a divine presentation in which the material ele- 
ment was once more predominant. It is the recognition 
of this declension of the Ahura conception which has 
served me in determining the relation in time betwixt the 
origin of the Persian and the Brahmin religions. The 
chronological data which have been made use of are ab- 
solutely unreliable; and the Persian is at first sight a re- 
ligion which is so much more ethical that, from our point 
of view, it appears to be the expression of a later and more 
highly developed religious consciousness than Brahminism; 
and not merely a step in the development which culminated 
in the latter. But as we shall see, this origin and de- 
clension of the Ahura gods is clearly indicated in the Vedas 
as a phase of the religious development which ran its 
course long before the Vedantic conception of the Brahman 
was established. In the second place, the recognition of 
this fact enables us to understand how it was that the 
Magi in later times were able to convince the Roman world 
that Mithra was indeed the saviour god that it was in 
search of. In this guise, Mithraism became the dominant 


266 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

religion throughout the Roman Empire during the first 
three centuries of our era. It was only because Mithra 
was himself a sinful and degraded edition of an originally 
pure god that this became possible ; and we shall see, when 
we come to speak of the Roman Racial movement, how 
easy it was, because of this, to fit Mithra to his new sur- 
roundings, and to make him for a time the supreme embodi- 
ment of the Roman religious consciousness. 

Before leaving this fifth stage, there is one point to 
which I wish to draw particular attention, as it possesses 
a very marked psychological significance. The gods of 
the fifth stage were no longer identified with idols, or with 
any material object in Nature. It was therefore no longer 
through the visual sense that the individual evoked in him- 
self the divine presentation. In this stage, the auditory 
sense was the one principally, if not entirely, made use of 
to stimulate the religious consciousness into activity. It 
was sound of any kind, but especially the verbal embodi- 
ment of sound used to give expression to the names and to 
the attributes of the gods, which specially appealed to the 
religious consciousness in its later stages of development. 
The names of the gods, the rhythmic succession of words 
describing their attributes, the varying inflections of the 
human voice in expressing the emotions with which the 
individual approached the divine presence, became the chief 
instrument of invocation in the act of worship. We have 
already seen how, in the third stage, the names of the gods 
had acquired a special significance, and the knowledge of 
how to use these names might give the individual an ex- 
traordinary power over the gods; that is to say, even in 
that early stage, the divine presentations were beginning 
to be intimately connected with the auditory sense. This 


Diagram IV. 








FIFTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 267 

relationship increased as the development proceeded, un- 
til, when we get to the fifth and sixth stages of the devel- 
opment, we find the auditory sense is, par excellence, the 
channel through which the religious consciousness is stim- 
ulated into activity. In the sixth stage of the religious 
development, which we shall be presently considering, we 
shall find that a verbal stimulation of the religious con- 
sciousness had acquired an extraordinary value, transcend- 
ing in efficacy and in merit all other forms of divine invo- 
cation. The study of the Vedas, so that he could recite 
them by heart, was the highest religious duty of the Brah- 
min. In the recitation of the sacred verses, the way 
in which they were uttered, the rhythmic succession of the 
words, and the varying inflections of the human voice ap- 
propriate to each, had the most tremendous significance. 
It was an art by itself, which required a lifelong study, and 
no one could hope to become proficient in it unless, in ad- 
dition, he possessed the natural capacity for it, which was 
the distinctive mark of the Brahmin caste. Once attained, 
however, this proficiency was rated so high that it spe- 
cially sanctified the individual in the eyes of the public, 
so that he could commit any crime against humanity with 
impunity. It was not so much the sense conveyed by the 
words that produced the effect; it was in the sound, 
handled and directed in a specific manner, in which the 
efficacy lay. The mere repetition of unintelligible syl- 
lables, which had no meaning in them beyond their mys- 
tical significance, came to be regarded as equally efficacious 
as the recitation of the whole of the Vedas. 

In short, it is clear that there had taken place, as part 
of the brain development which was being revealed in 
these religions, a specific connection between the Neo- 
andric ganglia and the outside world through the auditory 


268 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


sense, which made these ganglia entirely independent of 
the visual perceptions of the pre-existing Palseogynic mind- 
organ on which they had had to rely in the first place for 
stimulation. 

I will briefly indicate this, and also the successive 
phases of the brain development which had taken place, by 
means of the diagram on the opposite page. 

In this diagram, N is Neo-andric and P is Palseogynic 
tissue. D is a group of cells in the pre-existing Palseogynic 
mind-organ, the stimulation of which gave rise to a clear 
idea of some object or situation in the outside world be- 
fore the Neo-andric development commenced. We know 
by our experience that the visual sense is the most im- 
portant element in the excitation of an objective idea in 
consciousness, and cell-group D receives the sensuous stim- 
ulation which gives rise to its representation in conscious- 
ness through the channel v which connects it with the 
visual centres. A is the Neo-andric ganglion which, in 
the first stage of the development, was roused into activity 
by each recurrent stimulation of D. I have already said 
that it was particularly objects and situations in the out- 
side world which had in them some mysterious and un- 
familiar element which had the power of evoking the di- 
vine presentations. In the diagram, a is the unit of cell- 
group D which represents this mysterious and unfamiliar 
element. In its passage through a, the nervous current of 
energy liberated by the stimulation of D was retarded and 
pent up, and the resulting vibration reached A through 
the intervening substance, and gave rise in that ganglion 
to an explosion of nervous energy which simultaneously 
produced the divine presentation in consciousness, and the 
complete suppression of the psychic illumination of cell- 
group D. The effect on the individual was a painful 


FIFTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 269 

shock, which momentarily paralysed his faculties, and 
flooded his mind with terror. 

In the second stage of the development, A has become 
stronger, and a higher layer of the Neo-andric growth 
comes within the sphere of disturbance every time that A 
is stimulated: hence the supervention of a state of con- 
sciousness which promises to save the individual from his 
former state of terror. But as yet A is not able to reflect 
towards the bodily organs any of the virginal energy lib- 
erated in the Neo-andric mass. This virginal energy, over- 
flowing into the Palseogynic tissue which is adjacent to D, 
where it meets with lessened resistance through the sup- 
pression of activity in the Palseogynic tissue, gives rise to 
the beginning of the process X, through which A is finally 
to discharge the energy of the Neo-andric mass into the 
body of the individual. But in this second stage, the for- 
mation of X is only begun, and is not sufficient to im- 
press on the bodily attitude of the individual the exalta- 
tion of the Neo-andric cells. The individual therefore 
remains in himself a miserable and cringing creature al- 
though he is conscious of divine presentations which are 
full of promise to him. 

In the third stage, the Neo-andric cells B have come 
so largely within the sphere of disturbance emitted by 
stimulation of A, and, on the other hand, the psychic ac- 
tivity of group D is so reduced in consequence of the in- 
creased growth and power of the Neo-andric ganglia, that 
the immediate result of stimulation of group D is a psychic 
illumination of a very large body of Neo-andric cells be- 
longing to layer B. Through the liberation of this large 
amount of virginal energy, the channelling-out process X 
continues, and while it avoids the visual centre, it finally 
connects A with all the other governing centres, and senses 


270 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

of the body; with the viscera, with the muscular system, 
with the senses of touch, smell, and hearing. Thus, every 
stimulation of A induces an intense bodily reaction which 
is largely visceral in character. It is in this character that 
the subjective mental process differs most markedly in its 
physiological relationship from a mental process which is 
purely objective. It is absolutely necessary that the 
reader should grasp the importance of this physiological 
relationship, for it not only explains some of the most strik- 
ing phenomena of the Archaic period of human develop- 
ment, but it also affords us the key to some of the most 
difficult problems of modern psychology. It explains how 
it was that throughout the whole course of the develop- 
ment, the religious consciousness had such a power of in- 
ducing in the individual a bodily attitude in harmony with 
the divine presentation which it revealed, and it also ex- 
plains the very large influence which the mind, when it is 
thrown into a subjective phase of consciousness does ex- 
ert, and can be made artificially to exert, on the bodily 
functions of the individual. Whilst this channelling-out 
of a special process to connect A with the centres indi- 
cated, independently of the cell-group D, is clearly sug- 
gested to us by the actual character of the religious devel- 
opment, it is in harmony with our anatomical knowledge. 
The reader who cares to refer to the fifth chapter of Book 
I will see that each one of the higher cells is united directly 
with the white matter of the brain through a long process 
which runs independently of any subjacent group of pyra- 
midal cells. 

As the result of the entrance of the layer B into the 
area of psychical disturbance, and especially of the com- 
plete linking of A with the bodily organisation, a tre- 
mendous self-exaltation of the individual took place, and 


FIFTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 271 

so long as he was assiduous in those religious exercises which 
kept the Neo-andric cells in a fit state to respond quickly 
and powerfully to stimulation, the divine presentation did 
not produce in him any unpleasant sensations. The in- 
tegrity of cell-group D was still intact. The intellectual 
consciousness of the individual was therefore still unim- 
paired, but it was entirely at the service of the Neo-andric 
cells, so that it only operated in expressing in objective 
symbols the power and the eternity of the gods. Since 
the integrity of cell-group D was still unimpaired, the 
objective world was still a great reality which could not 
be denied. The early dynastic Egyptian was as pro- 
foundly conscious of his material existence as he was of 
that eternal life which the gods offered him. 

In the fourth stage, a still larger number of Neo- 
andric cells come within the area of psychical disturbance, 
and the whole of layer B now responds whenever A is stimu- 
lated into activity. At the same time, the energy of the 
Generic Growth has matured to such a point that it ex- 
presses, with overwhelming power, the necessities of its 
own existence, and compels the individual, through the 
channel X, to become in every way an efficient instrument 
in its maintenance. The whole bodily organisation of 
the individual becomes, therefore, responsive to the pas- 
sions which the Neo-andric ganglia impress on it. As the 
inhibitory influence of the Neo-andric cells is so much in- 
creased, the integrity of the Palseogynic cell-group D is 
correspondingly damaged. This influence had vented it- 
self mostly on a, the unit of cell-group D through which 
A initially received its stimulation, and with which it was 
therefore in direct and close relation. And as the result 
of this constantly repeated inhibition, a necessarily becomes 
so inactive that impulses can only with great difficulty 


272 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

pass through it. The result of this is that the integrity 
of the circuit is broken, and cell-group D no longer has 
the power of reproducing its associations as it formerly did. 
The reaction of A is so rapid and tremendous that these as- 
sociations are destroyed before the nascent idea can establish 
itself, by the blaze of inhibitory energy which discharges it- 
self from A. As the integrity of the old Palseogynic cell- 
group is now damaged, the individual’s objective con- 
sciousness is also seriously impaired, and with it the moral 
sense that is based on a recognition of the obligations of a 
civilised mode of existence. The material world and all the 
obligations of a civilised existence disappear in the blaze of 
the passions which flame up whenever A is stimulated into 
activity. 

As the block in a is so great, there is a great tendency 
for the nearest of the other units of cell-group D to enter 
into relation with A. But as yet no direct communication 
is channelled-out between A on the one side and b and e 
on the other, for the simple reason that the energy of the 
former is in a phase hostile and antagonistic to that of 
the latter. For A is still a subjective mind element, re- 
ceiving its energy directly from the Generic Organism, and 
so long as the latter is growing and developing, this energy 
is so great that it effectually prevents any activity on the 
part of the cell-group D, which might tend to establish 
such a communication. But the reader must bear in mind 
that it would only be so long as the Generic Organism was 
in an active state of growth that A would retain the power 
of preventing itself from being drawn into the circuit of 
cell-group D. 

But although the integrity of cell-group D was so far 
damaged that it would not produce in consciousness all the 
associations of which it had formerly been capable, its re- 


FIFTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 273 

sistive power to A was enormously increased by the very 
fact that it was stimulated into activity by every exercise 
of the passions. For so long as the exercise of the passions 
met with resistance in the outside world, it was absolutely 
necessary for the individual to keep his eyes open and to 
see clearly what he was doing if his attempts to carry out 
his religious obligations were to be successful. The ex- 
ercise of the passions therefore increased the resistive ca- 
pacity of the Palseogynic mind-elements, and correspond- 
ingly diminished the range of psychic stimulation in the 
Neo-andric mass. In these circumstances, it was obviously 
impossible for the layer B of Neo-andric cells to induce in 
the individual any great amount of transcendental feel- 
ing. In this stage the power of transcendental feeling, as 
well as that of intellectual ideation, were equally limited, 
and the main resultant of the psychological situation was 
to make the individual completely the slave of those pas- 
sions which were necessary for the due fulfilment of the 
Generic process. 

In the fifth stage of the development, the area of 
psychical disturbance in the Neo-andric mass would be still 
further increased, and part of the cells in layer C would 
necessarily come into operation. The subjective element 
in consciousness would thereby become enormously in- 
creased, and the tendency for this element to draw the in- 
dividual right away from the external world would at 
once make itself felt in a very pronounced manner. And 
as the chief element of weakness in the Neo-andric mass 
was the operation of the passions through A, there was 
therefore established in the Neo-andric mass itself two 
hostile parts, the chief element of the one being the newly 
excited cells in layer C, and in the other the passion cell A. 
The scene of the conflict between these two opposing forces 


274 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

was in the intermediate layer B. The upper part was 
necessarily the most vigorous, because it was farthest re- 
moved from the inhibitory influence of the Palseogynic 
mind-organ, and it therefore obtained the upper hand, and 
was able to draw the layer B so far within the sphere of 
its own influence that transcendentalism was established 
and was the dominant element in consciousness. It was, 
however, not powerful enough to destroy completely the 
resistance of the lower part, and the necessities of the eter- 
nal conflict which was thus established in the religious con- 
sciousness itself so enfeebled the transcendentalism that it 
had very little influence on the conduct of the individual 
beyond preventing him from worshipping the gods of pas- 
sion. And as the passionate element was thus banished 
from worship, it became necessary for the upper cells of the 
Neo-andric mass to establish a communication with the 
outside world, through which it might receive stimulation 
and at the same time express itself, independent of that 
which had been hitherto used. Thus, in exactly the same 
way as A had formerly produced the process X, the cells 
in layer B now channelled-out new processes, Y, which 
brought them into specific relationship with the auditory 
sense, and with the apparatus for the production of the 
human voice. 

In the sixth and final stage of the development, the 
whole mass of Neo-andric cells in layer C comes into oper- 
ation, with the result, as we shall presently see, that the 
supreme divine presentation became the deified self- 
consciousnss of the individual, and this appeared to be the 
only reality, eternal and all-pervading. Under the influ- 
ence of this divine presentation, the individual drew right 
away from the material world, and strove by every means 
in his power to become completely subjective. 


1 



1, plexiform layer ; 2, small pyramids ; 1 to 6, layers of the cortex. 

3, medium pyramids ; 4, superficial 
large pyramids; 5, small stellate 
cells (granules) ; 6 and 7, deep large 
and medium pyramids ; 8, fusiform 
cells. 

From “ Quain’s Anatomy,” by kind permission of Messrs. Scribner's Sons. 





























FIFTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 275 

The reader will see that we have postulated a progress- 
ive development layer by layer of the whole Neo-andric 
mass of cells, starting from the line of union betwixt that 
mass and the Palseogynic tissue; and if we take a section 
through the grey matter of the cerebral convolutions, it is 
clearly evident that the cells in question are thus arranged 
in definite layers, each layer being distinct from the other, 
and each layer being composed of cells which have under- 
gone exactly the same degree of development Opposite, 
two such sections are given, taken from different parts of 
the human brain. In other words, this postulated mode 
of development is proved by our anatomical knowledge; 
and I want the reader particularly to grasp the fact that 
this is so, because it has the most important bearing on 
the demonstration of the later stages of the cosmic process, 
as well as on the application of this demonstration to the 
psychological problems of the present day. 


CHAPTER IX 


SIXTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 

The sixth and final stage of the development reveals itself 
most clearly and permanently in the religious system of the 
Brahmins, which was established by a Racial movement 
that probably attained its zenith somewhere about fifteen 
hundred years before Christ. This system includes within 
its fold all the different classes of divine beings which we 
have hitherto considered. There are innumerable demons 
and good spirits of animistic origin; there are benevolent 
sun-gods of the third stage, as well as terrible passion-gods 
of the fourth. These gods possess a somewhat more spir- 
itual complexion than their prototypes in the Semitic 
religions; but this is the necessary result of their coming 
within the range of the Brahman atmosphere. All these 
different categories of divine beings reveal themselves in a 
kind of serial procession throughout the earlier parts of the 
Vedic literature; and the whole procession is finally capped 
by the self-revelation of the all-pervading and eternal 
Brahman as the ultimate source of the self-consciousness 
which is the essential element that gives to them life and 
activity. The great Brahman is not a separate deity, ab- 
solutely different in his integral nature from the rest of 
the gods; the latter are all, in respect to their essential di- 
vinity, identical with Brahman. In short, they are imper- 
fect manifestations of a single and all-pervading divine 
nature, which is that of the Brahman. 

That the Persian religion constitutes an earlier phase of 
the development is proved by the fact that in the Vedic 
276 


SIXTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 277 

literature there are clear indications of a stage that corre- 
sponds to the one which produced the Ahura gods, and 
came to an end long before the conception of the Brahman 
was established amongst the Indian Aryans. In this stage 
certain gods, notably Varuna, possessed a spiritual charac- 
ter indicated by the term Asura — a Sanskrit word that 
corresponds to the Persian Ahura — which placed them for 
a time on a higher level than the earlier material gods, who 
are typified by Indra. Subsequently, just as we have seen 
happen with the Ahura gods of the Persians, the Vedic gods 
typified by Varuna lost their advantage, and the material 
gods typified by Indra regained their ancient predominance. 
But the declension of the Asura gods in the Vedic religion 
was very much more pronounced than that which befell 
the Ahura gods. They sank so low in public estimation, as 
being constantly opposed to the higher gods, that the term 
Asura finally came to be applied to the lowest order of di- 
vine beings, the malignant demons who pervaded all space, 
and incessantly wrought evil on Mankind. This evil sig- 
nificance had become so indelibly impressed on the term 
Asura before the Racial movement began which established 
the conception of the Brahman, that the final triumph of 
the latter — though it was in itself an extension and con- 
firmation of the idea expressed in the Ahura god — did noth- 
ing to remove it. In all the later Brahmin literature, the 
word Dseva stands for the higher god, the word Asura im- 
plies the lowest animistic demon. Thus it is clear that the 
inspiration which gave the self-revelation of the Brahman 
its supreme position in the religious consciousness, sprang 
from a Racial movement that was distinct from that which 
produced the worship of Ahura-mazda, and subsequent 
to it. The effects of the earlier Racial movement were 
probably more feebly felt by the Indian than by the Persian 


278 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

Aryans; and amongst the latter the brilliant theology de- 
vised by the genius of Zoroaster strongly contributed to 
maintain their reverence for what was implied by the term 
Ahura — although they themselves in later times worshipped 
in Mithra a god who was a very debased edition of the orig- 
inal ideal. 

The transition between the two phases is marked by the 
appearance in Vedic mythology of the two great figures of 
Siva and Vishnu. Both these gods, on the one side, were 
embodiments of the earlier material gods. Siva embodied 
in himself the great criminal passions which some of the 
earlier gods had personified; he was the god of destruction 
as well as of promiscuous reproduction, and his worship in- 
volved all the inhuman and immoral practices rendered 
obligatory in the cult of the Babylonian gods. Vishnu 
comprehended in himself the more benevolent and preserva- 
tive virtues manifested in the earlier sun-gods. But on the 
other side of their natures, both these gods were identical 
with the wholly spiritual and all-pervading Brahman. This 
had the effect of infusing into the passions engendered by 
the worship of Siva the horrible malignancy of the religious 
ascetic; and into the benevolence inspired by Vishnu a re- 
ligious ecstasy so much more intense than that originally 
associated with the worship of the sun-gods that it found 
vent in an excess of licentious profligacy. Siva often ap- 
pears in Hindoo mythology as the divine pattern of the fast- 
ing devotee, intent upon the attainment of ecstatic and 
magical powers through savage self-torture, and self-induced 
vacuity, apathy, and trance. In this character he is the 
lord of ascetics, living in the solitude of forest and moun- 
tain, sitting motionless with matted hair and body smeared 
with ashes, with breath suppressed, with vision withdrawn 
from all outward things, with every thought and feeling 


SIXTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 279 

crushed within him. The earthly desires that raged within 
him were only to be satisfied by the incessant rape and mur- 
der of human beings; and the loathing with which he re- 
garded those who were continually exciting his lust and 
preventing him from attaining to a state of complete men- 
tal abstraction, bred in his worship the most malignant form 
of passion to be found in all the cults of Oriental Paganism. 
Vishnu, on the other hand, was a mystical figure whose face 
was turned towards humanity, and whose energies were con- 
stantly devoted to the preservation of mankind. Whenever 
great dangers threatened he was in the habit of appearing 
on the scene in human form, and of doing great deeds of 
daring to save his people. In all these incarnations, the 
most famous of which are those of Rama and of Krishna, 
he manifests himself as a very benevolent, a very heroic, 
and a very amorous being. We may take it that the ap- 
pearance of these two gods marks the beginning of the wave 
of inspiration which finally culminated in the Vedantic con- 
ception of the Brahman. The religious consciousness of 
this Racial movement revealed to the individual this trinity 
of supreme gods, Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu, presiding over 
the infinite world of supernatural beings, which comprised 
as well all the older gods and the animistic spirits and de- 
mons. Although supreme, these higher gods were of the 
same nature as the lower ones. All without exception were 
equally imperfect manifestations of the same divine sub- 
stance which constituted the essential being of the all-per- 
vading Brahman. During the actual growth of the Racial 
movement, when the wave of religious inspiration was in 
the ascendant, the priestly caste managed to maintain the 
predominance of Brahman, and the official literature of 
that period, although it often identifies Siva and Vishnu 
with Brahman, does not particularly emphasise the trin- 


28 o the significance of ancient religions 

itarian conception of the deity. But the worshippers of 
Vishnu and Siva always far outnumbered those of the 
Brahman; and in later times, when the same sort of eclipse 
threatened the conception of Brahman as had happened to 
the Asura gods, the Brahmin caste were forced, in order to 
prevent a catastrophe which would have completely shat- 
tered their own position, to give greater prominence to Siva 
and to Vishnu, and to put them forward officially as equal 
and identical in every respect with the Brahman. 

So supreme is the position of the Brahman in the religious 
system, that there is no longer any antagonism betwixt him 
and the earlier material gods, although he represents some- 
thing that is just as absolutely antithetical to them as were 
the Ahura gods to the Daevas in the fifth stage. There is 
no antagonism because the old conflict is at an end, and the 
spiritual element in the divine presentation has completely 
triumphed, and if the material gods are to exist at all they 
must be content to accept the inferior position. There is 
also no antagonism because, provided his supremacy is ac- 
knowledged, Brahman has no objection to the continued ex- 
istence of the lower gods, nor to their evil effects on the ma- 
terial condition of humanity. The material interests of 
humanity are no concern of his. Thus the Brahmin re- 
ligious system includes within its fold all the different 
classes of spiritual beings which we have hitherto consid- 
ered. There is no doubt, therefore, that the self-revelation 
of Brahman is the culminating point of the whole growth 
of religious ideas that we have hitherto been studying, and 
it reveals the subjective change which was responsible for 
the process of religious ideation so clearly that it gives us 
the key to the meaning of the whole development. 

Throughout the Upanishads, Brahman is constantly and 
repeatedly described, in terms about which no mistake can 


SIXTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 281 

be made, as the human Self. “He who within rules this 
world and the other world and all beings, who dwells in the 
earth and within the earth, whom the earth does not know, 
whose body the earth is, who rules the earth within, he is 
thy Self — ” “He in whom the heaven, the earth, and the 
sky are woven, the mind also with all the vital airs, know 
him alone as thy Self, and leave off other words.” This 
Self, this Brahman, is the only existent reality, eternal and 
all-pervading, existing in all things, dominating and causing 
them. Nothing real exists outside of the Self. The ideas 
we have of external objects are simply illusions through 
which the Self reveals itself to our senses. Therefore this 
Self has nothing to do with the bodily self of the individual, 
and in order to make this clear, Brahman is frequently iden- 
tified with pure thought or pure knowledge: but this pure 
thought or pure knowledge is not thought or knowledge of 
the external world. The external world does not exist: 
Brahman is the only existent reality. Therefore, this pure 
thought or pure knowledge is knowledge and thought of 
Brahman himself, and as Brahman is the Self, thought or 
knowledge of Brahman is necessarily Self-consciousness. 
This, indeed, is what Brahman literally is — the deified Self- 
consciousness of the individual. As the inspired individual 
withdrew into the depths of his Self-consciousness, he felt 
expanding within him a sense of eternity and of infinity, 
which grew until it pervaded all space and all time, and 
became for him the only existent reality, absolutely inde- 
pendent of those limitations with which the illusionary 
senses appeared to fetter him. That released and expand- 
ing Self-consciousness was Brahman. As Gough tells us in 
his philosophy of the Upanishads, the original idea of the 
term Brahman is indicated in its etymology: it is a deriva- 
tive of the root “Brih,” — to grow, to increase. It was there- 


282 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

fore that conscious element within the individual, which, if 
properly ministered to, developed and expanded to such an 
extent that it carried the individual right away from the 
realities of the external world into the realms of complete 
abstraction, wherein he was aware only of his own Self-con- 
sciousness, and wherein that Self-consciousness pervaded all 
time and all space, and became the single operative cause of 
all existence and change in the universe. 

In order to realise this flood of Self-consciousness which 
identified him with Brahman, the individual had to blind 
himself completely to the realities of the external world, to 
train his senses so that these realities lost their reality and 
became for him figments of the imagination which had no 
real existence. Every sensation, every cognition, every af- 
fection, every passion which tended to chain him to the 
outside world had to be suppressed before his Self-conscious- 
ness could expand into that free and unfettered state in 
which it pervaded all time and all space, and became identi- 
fied with the highest Brahman. There were, of course, sev- 
eral degrees of the self-exaltation that were obtainable, and 
corresponding to these several levels of self-exaltation there 
were different categories of the Brahman. There was the 
highest Brahman who was identified with the Self-conscious- 
ness of the individual who completely divorced his atten- 
tion from the material world, and who could maintain for 
himself a condition of ecstatic stupor in which he was sensi- 
ble of nothing but the bliss of being himself ; this again was 
identified with the state of the Self in the individual who is 
in a dreamless sleep. Then there was the Brahman who 
was identified with the Self-consciousness of the individual 
who has so trained himself that all external things have lost 
their reality for him, so that they appear to him as things 
which have no real or independent existence, and can be 


SIXTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 283 

made to move about and to behave in whatever manner he 
pleases by an effort of his will, although he has not yet com- 
pletely lost his consciousness of them; this again is identified 
with the state of the Self in the individual who is dreaming 
in sleep and in whose consciousness, therefore, the images 
of external things float about in a manner completely de- 
termined by the blissful radiance which illuminates the at- 
mosphere of his dream. Then there was another kind of 
Brahman, identified with the Self-consciousness of the unre- 
generated individual in his waking state, who had not freed 
himself from the claims of the flesh. But the lowest kind 
of Brahman was the personification of these several ideas 
of Self-consciousness — a personal god like all the lower gods 
who were animistic conceptions of the objects and processes 
of Nature, and who therefore ruled over the world of lower 
gods and belonged to the same category of divine things. 
The fact that in this classification the highest Brahman is 
identified with the state of the Self in dreamless sleep is very 
significant; it implies that the thing that was revealing itself 
in the uttermost depths of the religious consciousness as the 
cause of the individual Self, was apprehended as a creative 
entity that was in itself void of consciousness. 

It was through no volition of the great and all-pervading 
Brahman that the realities of the external world came into 
existence; he was not the creator of the material universe. 
On the contrary, he was eternally opposed to its existence 
and eternally striving to obliterate it. That it existed, or 
appeared to exist, at all, was due indeed to an imperfection 
in his creative power which was called Maya. Throughout 
the endless eternity of his existence, Brahman’s sole pre- 
occupation was to rid himself of this imperfection, and to 
create a world wherein nothing material should exist. But 
in every world that he created the flaw manifested and 


284 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

maintained itself, and after vainly endeavouring for a time 
to perfect it, he had to destroy it in disgust and set to work 
to create another one that was to prove equally disappoint- 
ing; for Maya was as eternal as Brahman himself. Thus, 
although his creative efforts were the cause of the appear- 
ance of the material world, it was only in spite of him that 
it came into existence. Its existence was not a sign of his 
power, but a sign of his weakness. The sight of it gave 
him no pleasure, but filled him rather with disgust and 
hatred; and his worshippers could only enter into intimate 
communion with him if they realised in themselves this at- 
titude, and behaved in respect of every truth and every fact 
in the material world, as if they were things that ought to 
be denied and suppressed. And just as his own eternal 
existence was an endless series of disappointing efforts to 
free himself from Maya, so was the eternal existence of the 
individual an endless series of reincarnations through which 
he might eventually win emancipation from the horrors of 
material existence. 

The future life revealed itself to the individual as an end- 
less succession of such reincarnations, in which his position 
was determined by the acts of his present existence. By 
worthy conduct in his present life a man of low caste might 
reappear again in this world as a living being of a higher 
caste ; by unworthy conduct a man of high caste might have 
to reappear in the outward semblance of one of the lower 
brutes. Every period of material existence was succeeded 
by a short interval which the individual passed in heaven or 
in hell, according to his deserts; but at the end of this short 
interval he had to resume his weary passage through the 
illusory conditions of a material existence, and obtain merit 
by taking part in the great fight against all the truths and 
the realities of the material world that was the main pre- 


SIXTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 285 

occupation of the Brahman's existence. Thus every act of 
a man's life was rewarded or punished in the future life; 
although the effects of evil acts could in most instances be 
mitigated or obliterated by the performance of one of the 
innumerable penances that are prescribed by the Brahmin 
laws as an integral part of the religious life. The indi- 
vidual’s attention was therefore entirely fixed on the future, 
and his present life was only of importance in so far as it 
affected his future. But the reader must clearly under- 
stand that the law imposed on the individual by this belief 
in the future life was not one that exercised a moral or 
humanising influence on him; on the contrary, it tended to 
destroy and obliterate the last vestiges of those moral and 
humane qualities which the civilising influence of each Racial 
movement infuses into human nature. For the ideal aimed 
at was not perfection in the moral and humane qualities; 
the ideal placed before the individual was one of complete 
isolation from the material world with all its interests, sym- 
pathies, and affections. Whatever tended to induce in him 
this attitude of self-centred isolation was in the highest de- 
gree commendable and praiseworthy in the present life, 
and certain of abundant reward in the future, even though 
it involved complete neglect of a man’s earthly duties, and 
led him to behave cruelly and unjustly to his fellow crea- 
tures. Meditation on one’s own Self, complete abstraction 
from worldly affairs, frequent repetition of sacred syllables 
or verses, regular performance of those sacrifices on which 
depended the creative and administrative vigour of the gods ; 
these were the acts rewarded as great virtues in the future 
life of the Brahmins. On the other hand, acts that were in 
the highest degree moral or humane might ensure for the in- 
dividual prolonged periods of expiatory torture, if in any 
way they had the effect of preventing him from attaining to 


286 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


that state of complete isolation, or interfered with the social 
arrangements which the Brahmin law had established in 
order to render possible the attainment and maintenance of 
that state. Thus a Brahmin might commit every crime 
against humanity with impunity so far as the future life 
was concerned, provided he was learned in the Vedas, 
and sacrificed regularly to the gods; but if he did any serv- 
ice to a Sudra, either in some matter pertaining to this world 
or in some matter relating to the next; or if he behaved 
morally in reference to a Sudra woman to whose charms he 
had fallen a victim, and made her his wife, he was sent 
right away to hell when he died, and after he had sufficiently 
expiated his sin in a phase of active torture, he had to re- 
enter material existence in some extremely degraded form. 

The theory of sacrifice was exactly the same in the 
Brahmin as in all other pagan religions. Sacrifices were 
imposed on human beings for the definite purpose of feed- 
ing the gods, renovating their energies, and enabling them 
to do certain things. As it appears in the Bhagavadgita : 
“Prajapati of old created beings with their rites of sacrifice, 
and said; Hereby shall you propagate yourselves; this 
shall be to you the cow of plenty. Sustain with this the 
gods, and let the gods sustain you: supporting each other 
in turn, you shall attain the highest happiness. Fed with 
sacrifice, the gods shall give you the food that you desire.” 
Many of the sacred books of the Brahmins are entirely de- 
voted to the subject of sacrifice. Each sacrifice was sup- 
posed to operate in a blind and mechanical way towards the 
production of a specified result. The sequence of the fruit 
upon the performance of the function presented itself as 
part of the fixed succession of events. Minute rules were 
framed for every step of the sacrificial procedures, and ex- 
planations invented to give to every implement and every 


SIXTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 287 

act its several symbolic import. Expiatory formulas were 
provided to make up for inadvertencies and omissions which 
might otherwise frustrate the purpose of the initiated votary, 
and the priestly experts he employed. In these perform- 
ances every gesture, every movement, every word, every in- 
flection in the voice of the sacrificer had a tremendous im- 
port. He gave strength to certain gods by pronouncing 
loudly the vowels, he aroused others to activity by em- 
phasising the sibilants in the words of his prayer. All this 
followed naturally on the belief that in his self-conscious- 
ness the Brahmin could pull the strings that made things 
happen in the universe. So numerous were these sacrifices 
and so complicated was their performance, that they could 
only be performed efficaciously and without danger to 
everybody concerned by specialists, who devoted themselves 
entirely to the understanding of a limited number. 

As the essential principle that gave to the lower gods 
their spiritual vitality was Brahman, sacrificing to these 
lower gods was a way of sacrificing to Brahman himself. 
But the highest sacrifice, and the one without which Brah- 
man could not exist with sufficient vigour to maintain the 
spiritual government which ruled all things, was that ren- 
dered to him by the Brahmin caste. On the capacity of 
the Brahmins to attain to the ideal of complete self-isola- 
tion, on their maintaining in themselves the knowledge of 
the Vedas, and on their frequent repetition of the sacred 
texts or syllables depended the maintenance of the world. 
It is said in the Institutes of Vishnu: “The gods are in- 
visible deities, the Brahmins are visible deities. The Brah- 
mins sustain the world. It is by the favour of the Brah- 
mins that the gods reside in heaven; a speech uttered by 
Brahmins (whether a curse or a benediction) never fails 
to come true. . . . When the visible gods are pleased 


288 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 


the invisible gods are surely pleased as well.” It was there- 
fore of the highest importance to the community in general 
that the Brahmins should suffer no obstruction in their ef- 
forts to attain to the highest level of mental abstraction; 
and this necessity was the reason of their supreme position 
in the social organisation, and the extreme readiness with 
which everybody deferred to their wishes. Greed, anger, 
and sexual lust were recognised as incompatible with the 
ideal frame of mind requisite in the most perfect Brahmin. 
But it was understood that even those who eventually at- 
tained to the highest levels had to pass through stages 
wherein they were subject to the passions; and when these 
feelings surged up in a Brahmin, it was of the utmost im- 
portance that no impediment should be offered to their sat- 
isfaction, so that the holy man should be purged as soon 
as possible of their cravings and allowed to proceed in peace 
on his way to the higher levels. If a man dared to incur 
the resentment of a Brahmin, it was therefore natural that 
the latter should be allowed to wreak his anger on him with- 
out restraint; if a woman inflamed his lust, it was her 
bounden duty to surrender with the least possible delay to 
his desire, so as to appease in him the tumult of feeling 
which she was responsible for. The passions were im- 
pulses of divine origin ; they were breathed into men by the 
gods themselves; and it was fully recognised that every re- 
ligious exercise, even the reading of the Vedas, tended to 
inflame them. In one of the dissertations on the sacred 
laws, it is said: “A Brahmana who has studied the Vedas 
and a he-goat evince the strongest sexual desires.” In these 
circumstances it was absurd even to think of suppressing or 
punishing them; what had to be done was to organise the 
whole of society in such a way as to allow every desire of 
a Brahmin to fulfil itself with impunity the moment it was 


SIXTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 289 

conceived; lest the sacred quietism which it was in the in- 
terests of all that the Brahmin should attain, should be 
hindered by pent up feelings of a turbulent nature. Thus 
arose the weird social system of the ancient Hindoos; a 
social system that completed the progressive sacrifice of the 
material interests of humanity in the services of the gods, 
and was in every detail the very antithesis of the modern 
ideal of civilisation. 

The theory of sacrifice led inevitably to the practice of 
magic. The fundamental conception of all systems of 
magic is that the divine being is one that the individual 
can control and coerce for his own purposes; and this is a 
corollary of the fundamental idea in the theory of sacrifice 
that the existence and the energies of the divine being are 
dependent to a large extent, if not altogether, on the minis- 
trations of the individual. Especially would the tendency 
to magic become pronounced in proportion as the self-ex- 
altation of the individual increased; and as a progressive 
self-exaltation was an essential feature of the development 
of the religious consciousness, we should expect, in the later 
phases of this development, a corresponding development in 
the practice of magic. As a matter of fact, in both the 
Persian and Brahmin religions, the practice of magic at- 
tained such a monstrous growth that it became the chief 
characteristic of the ritual of divine worship. We ac- 
tually derive the word “magic” from the name of the tribe 
which provided the religion of Zoroaster with its official 
priesthood. In this religion the antithesis in the religious 
consciousness of the two hostile and equally powerful sets 
of deities, whose relations were admittedly dependent on 
the actions of men, necessarily sanctioned the development 
and exercise of an occult power which might be used either 
to thwart or to help and direct the activity of some deity. 


290 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

In the Brahmin religion the practice of magic became an 
even more legitimate and necessary accompaniment of the 
divine ritual, because of the fact that all the gods were so 
afflicted by the inertness and the remoteness which was char- 
acteristic of the Brahman, and thereby so disinclined to at- 
tend to the affairs of this material world, that it required 
some compulsion to make them perform the services for 
which sacrifice was offered. The sacrifice gave them the 
power to do certain things, but this power they might not 
in every case exercise without the application of some de- 
gree of compulsion; and this element of compulsion was 
supplied by the will, or the intensification of the self-con- 
sciousness, of the Brahmin who performed the sacrifice. It 
was universally recognised that any sacrifice that could con- 
fidently be expected to produce satisfactory results must be 
performed by a properly qualified Brahmin. Without the 
necessary element of compulsion that such a Brahmin could 
apply, the sacrifice might be totally inoperative and inef- 
fectual. The Brahmins thus became invested with a power 
equal, and in some respects superior, to that of the gods; 
and the exercise of this power in other senses than that of 
divine worship became a legitimate part of their vocation. 
In this practice the old and more offensive forms of pro- 
cedure which were characteristic of the lowest forms of 
witchcraft and sorcery disappeared; but the fundamental 
principle involved in the practice remained the same. It 
grew into a science embracing in its purview the definition, 
the classification, and the use of all the mystical modes of 
behaviour — rhythmical sounds and movements, recurrent 
repetitions of unintelligible and mysterious names and 
phrases, incantations and talismanic formulae, and es- 
pecially the use in a specific manner of the essential names 
of the deities — by which the individual might induce and 


SIXTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 291 

direct, either in himself or in others, the well defined and 
limited excitation of the religious consciousness which would 
cause the person influenced either to feel or to do certain 
things. If the reader will bear in mind the tremendous 
grip that the religious consciousness had obtained over the 
mental attitude of the individual, and what extraordinary 
things it had already caused him to feel and to do in the 
course of its development, it will be obvious to him that an 
adept in this science might cause all manner of things to 
happen to one who submitted to his ministrations. The 
latter might see and converse with supernatural beings, or 
with people who were far away from him, or even with the 
dead. He might gaze with fear and awe on the antics per- 
formed by inanimate objects in his presence. He might be 
driven to do certain things, or have induced in him an ex- 
pectation of coming events which would be sure to fulfil 
itself. He might be cured of some physical ailments, or 
saved from the worry of others. The mental attitude of 
the individual was such that the things in the external world 
that impinged on his senses did not appear to be real. 
They had no independent existence, and they were not gov- 
erned and conditioned by those eternal and unchangeable 
modes of behaviour which we call the Laws of Nature. 
They did not behave each after the manner of its own kind. 
There was nothing fixed or permanent about their modes of 
behaviour. They were in a constant state of flux, chang- 
ing their identity, behaving abnormally, and even occa- 
sionally vanishing altogether at the behest of his self-con- 
sciousness, just as things are wont to do when we dream. 
By intensifying his self-consciousness he could play all man- 
ner of tricks on these external things, which appeared to 
him to be illusions of his senses. By means of a mumbled 
word or gesture he could produce action at an infinite dis- 


292 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

tance from himself. In his own self-consciousness he could 
pull the strings that determined the course of events out- 
side himself. Every expression of his self-consciousness, 
every movement of his body, every inflexion of his voice, 
started impulses that went quivering and radiating all 
around him, changing and moving things according to his 
will. This was how the material universe presented itself 
to the eyes of the Brahmin, and although the ordinary in- 
dividual might fully realise that he himself was incapable 
of exercising this occult power, he had the most profound 
belief that this occult power was a reality, and that it could 
be exercised by those who made the practice of it the busi- 
ness of their lives; and this belief made him in the highest 
degree susceptible to the ministrations of the magician. 
But in thus playing tricks on the religious consciousness, the 
magician necessarily impaired its vigour. However stu- 
pendous might be the results obtained by magic, the prac- 
tice was one that inevitably destroyed or degraded the 
power of spiritual realisation of the deity. Especially was 
this the case when, in order to induce certain states of mind, 
the magician was driven to avail himself of the suggestive 
influence of those rites and ceremonies in which the ear- 
lier cults expressed themselves; and, as we have seen, both 
in the Persian and Brahmin religions, the deities who first 
revealed themselves as purely spiritual conceptions during 
the period of Racial inspiration completely lost their hold 
on the people in later times, and the latter relapsed in each 
case into the worship of divine presentations that were es- 
sentially gross and material. 

But even apart from the practice of magic, there was in 
the philosophy of Brahminism a strong tendency to oblit- 
erate the conception of the deity in the religious conscious- 
ness, and to replace it by a transcendental form of atheism. 


SIXTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 293 

At its highest point of intensity, the separation between the 
deity and the self on the one hand was so impalpable; and 
on the other hand, the intensification of the self-conscious- 
ness of the individual was so pronounced and monstrous, 
that it finally revealed itself to the emancipated individual 
as the only existent reality. The idea of the deity tends 
completely to disappear, and the idea of a deified self alone 
remains which owes allegiance to nothing above itself. 
This ultimate tendency shows itself in more than one of 
the schools of Brahminical thought; and it became, as we 
know, the germ on which was built the whole superstructure 
of Buddhism. It will be sufficient for our present purpose 
to make a note of the fact that, in the final stage of the de- 
velopment of Oriental Paganism, the highest embodiment 
of the deity tended to disappear from the religious conscious- 
ness, leaving a void which, in the absence of any further 
revelation, could only be filled by the worship of inferior 
gods of a gross and material nature. 

The last point in the structure of Brahminism that I wish 
to call attention to is the trinitarian conception of the deity 
involved in it. This trinitarian conception of the deity is 
not restricted to Brahminism, but forms an integral part 
of the philosophy of paganism, as it reveals itself in all 
the great cults that precede it. It first makes its appear- 
ance in the religious system of the Egyptians, but in this 
system it is very vaguely delineated and probably is a con- 
ception which has been engrafted in later times on to the 
original structure. But in the Babylonian religious sys- 
tem the conception is fundamental and permanent. It at- 
taches itself to the conception of the gods from the very 
first, so that they were always thought of in sets of three. 
The greatest of the Babylonian triads was that consisting 
of Anu, Bel, and Ea. What I want the reader particularly 


294 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

to notice is that in this, the greatest Babylonian triad, the 
three figures that constitute the trinity differ from each other 
in character in exactly the same way as the corresponding 
figures of Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu. Moreover, the fig- 
ures in the Babylonian trinity and the figures in the Brah- 
min trinity are distinctly homologous. Brahma is homolo- 
gous with Anu, the remote and mysterious creator of 
the gods ; Siva is homologous with Bel, the embodi- 
ment of the human passions ; and Vishnu is homolo- 
gous with Ea, the god who preserves humanity. The 
same trinitarian conception of the deity, and the same 
homology is visible in the Persian trinity of Ahura-mazda, 
Ahriman, and Mithra. Throughout the whole of the de- 
velopment of Oriental Paganism, at any rate in its higher 
phases, there runs this trinitarian conception of the deity, 
and no theory that professes to explain the development 
of religious ideas can be complete unless it contains within 
itself an explanation of this remarkable phenomenon in the 
development. The only explanation of this that has ever 
been offered is that in the Egyptian theology the trinitarian 
conception groups the gods into families of father, mother, 
and son. But this explanation becomes absurd the mo- 
ment we apply it to the trinitarian conception of the deity 
in the higher pagan religions. In these higher religions 
there is not the slightest resemblance in any of these triads 
to a family group. Indeed, the component figures differ 
so tremendously in character, and are so fundamentally 
antagonistic to each other that their relations appear to defy 
any attempt at unification. But if the reader will refer 
back to the fifth chapter of Book I, he will see that, in 
the process of Generic evolution, there is a trinity of de- 
terminant factors; and the relation of these determinant 
factors is exactly the relation of the three figures in the 


SIXTH STAGE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 295 

great triads of the higher pagan religions. Brahma, for 
example, is clearly the reflection in consciousness of the Ge- 
neric Organism; Vishnu, the reflection of the Racial Or- 
ganism ; and Siva, the reflection in consciousness of the Ge- 
neric Growth in the individual which was responsible for 
the passions. We may therefore conclude that it was the 
existence of this trinity of determinant factors in the proc- 
ess of Generic evolution which gave rise to the trinitarian 
conception of the deity. Feebly indicated in the third 
stage, the conception becomes more clearly expressed in 
each successive step of the religious development, until in 
the sixth and final stage of that development it becomes 
the unmistakable expression in consciousness of the trinity 
of determinant factors which exists in the process of Ge- 
neric evolution. 

I have said enough to show conclusively that the devel- 
opment of religious ideas which actually did take place 
during the Archaic period of human development was the 
natural result of the addition of a new layer of brain cells 
to the anatomy of the individual through the cosmic process 
postulated in my theory. The whole history of humanity 
during this period, and the religious development which 
culminated in Brahminism, is the objective proof not only 
of the existence of a subjective phase of consciousness, but 
also of the whole cosmic process through which the subjec- 
tive phase of consciousness came into existence. The mo- 
ment we realise what it was that was being revealed in these 
ancient religions, it becomes perfectly clear to us why that 
law of worship and sacrifice which wrought such havoc in 
material civilisation and culture was emphasised and in- 
sisted upon in each one of them. The existence of these 
gods was entirely dependent on the ministrations of human 
beings, because they were revelations in consciousness of a 


296 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

process that was actually taking place in humanity itself. 
Neither the gods themselves could exist and maintain their 
predominance, nor could the cosmic process have fulfilled 
itself, without that complete subjection of the individual 
to the necessities of the development which was expressed 
and enforced in the law of sacrifice. 


CHAPTER X 


REVELATION OF GOD IN JEHOVAH 

I have thus shown that the whole process of religious 
ideation in Oriental Paganism constitutes one continuous 
development, starting from a point of origin standing in 
definite relationship to the historical progression of events 
during the Archaic period. Neither the volition, the ma- 
terial interests, nor the experience of the individuals af- 
fected by it had anything to do with its causation. The 
process arose, overwhelmed, and carried them along in its 
course struggling impotently against the obligations it im- 
posed on them. It overwhelmed the inherited civilised in- 
stincts of Mankind, and at the same time paralysed the 
civilising influence of each Racial movement through which 
it propagated itself. It is clear, therefore, that it was it- 
self of a cosmic nature; a cosmic process of much larger 
magnitude and much greater intensity than that which was 
responsible for each Racial movement. And it produced its 
effects by inducing in the individual a progressive subjec- 
tive change which made him conscious of the inhuman gods 
of Oriental Paganism, and forced him to sacrifice to them 
the material civilisation and the moral instincts on which 
the happiness of humanity depends. 

But every evolutionary process must tend ultimately to 
the advantage of the individuals that it affects, and make 
them more efficient in the struggle for existence; else there 
would soon be an end to all living things. Hitherto the 
cosmic process which we have been studying had produced 
results catastrophic to humanity. In the next stage of the 
297 


298 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

development Judaism achieved its great revelation, and in 
the sublime figure of Jehovah the religious consciousness re- 
vealed to humanity the true Creator and the final purpose 
of the great process. 

The reader must clearly understand that the subjective 
consciousness was just as competent to reveal to the indi- 
vidual the source of the creative energy that was determin- 
ing the development as it was to reveal the development 
itself; provided that the source of creative energy had a 
substantive existence separate from that of the process. If 
no such separate source of creative energy existed, and the 
ultimate determinant of the process were nothing more than 
its own contained energy, then no revelation of a Creator, 
possessing an existence independent of the process, and 
therefore separate and distinct from the pagan gods al- 
ready revealed, could have effected itself. But if such an 
independent and separate Creator really existed, then it 
was clearly within the competence of the higher intelligence 
to reveal Him. But further, if the revelation of a per- 
sonal Creator — that is to say, a Creator separate and dis- 
tinct from the cosmic process — was an important factor in 
the consummation of the process, then it was not merely 
within the competence of the new mind-organ in its sub- 
jective stage to reveal Him, but it was unavoidable that it 
should do so; for, as I have said, the subjective phase of 
consciousness is a self-revealing form of intelligence, and it 
was bound to reveal all the factors that were concerned in 
the development. It had revealed its own constitution, its 
own existence, and the cosmic process that was determining 
this existence, in the pagan religions. If there existed be- 
sides a God whose creative energy was responsible for the 
occurrence of this particular cosmic process as well as of 
all others, and if the knowledge of His existence was a 


THE REVELATION OF GOD IN JEHOVAH 299 

necessary factor in the final consummation of the process, 
then it was inevitable that this subjective phase of con- 
sciousness, when it had attained to its highest point of in- 
tensity, should reveal clearly and unmistakably the ex- 
istence, and the separate existence, of this independent 
Creator. We will put it in this way: that when the higher 
intelligence had attained to full maturity and to the full 
perfection of its capacity as a self-revealing instrument of 
consciousness, all lesser revelations would be necessarily 
quenched in one brilliant illumination wherein would be re- 
vealed and brought close to the individual in one sublime 
figure, the Source of the creative energy of the Universe, 
which had manifested itself for a moment in this particular 
cosmic process, but had equally operated throughout the 
ages in all other processes; and was therefore of a nature 
separate, universal, eternal, and transcendental; not to be 
identified with the pagan gods or this particular process 
that they represented. And what I shall show in this chap- 
ter is that God — thus defined as the true Creator of the Uni- 
verse — did actually reveal Himself to humanity through 
the religious consciousness of that Racial movement, in 
which the subjective phase of the development of the higher 
intelligence reached its highest point of intensity. 

The figure of Jehovah, in other words, is not merely a 
subjective creation of the human mind like one of the pagan 
gods, but personifies an existent reality in the outside world. 
But although He is thus a great objective reality, He was 
apprehended by the Jews in a purely subjective manner, 
and they were incapable of expressing their consciousness of 
Him in any other terms but those of the subjective mind. 
It is this fact which makes the literature of the Old Testa- 
ment, which we shall presently have to consider, so difficult 
of comprehension to the modern individual. Through 


300 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

their higher intelligence, the Jews saw the God who had 
created the material universe; but this higher intelligence 
did not yet allow them to see the material universe itself. 
They were not in touch with it in the manner that was char- 
acteristic of the Greeks and of all subsequent Races. Their 
higher intelligence had not been trained to behave in an ob- 
jective manner. The whole literature of the Old Testa- 
ment is an expression of a subjective phase of conscious- 
ness ; and it is thus a purely symbolical form of expression 
which clothes itself in terms that constantly violate the nat- 
ural order of things as we know it, and are only truthful in 
the sense that they truthfully express the vision of God 
that it is intended to reveal. I have already shown, in talk- 
ing of pagan myths, that these myths were in every case the 
self-revelation of a religious consciousness, and that the 
terms used were natural facts and processes fantastically 
viewed so that they might accurately symbolise the feeling 
that was to be expressed. In the same way, the whole of 
the narrative portion of the Old Testament is a symbolical 
expression of the religious consciousness of its authors in 
terms which are provided by the world of external reali- 
ties, but which are, nevertheless, used in this connection 
with very scant regard to their intrinsic value. The only 
difference in the symbolism of the Old Testament from 
that of the pagan myth is that the Jews did not express 
their consciousness of God in terms of natural events. 
What they did was to make use of all such myths, legends, 
and narratives of historical events as they could lay hold 
of, and these they framed into just such a shape, however 
inaccurate and fantastic from an objective point of view 
that shape might be, as could most fitly express the great 
intuition with which their minds were pregnant. In other 
words, the symbolism of the Old Testament is a symbolism 


THE REVELATION OF GOD IN JEHOVAH 301 

which clothes itself in terms of human consciousness and not 
in terms of natural events; and it is because of this that 
the whole literature is so much grander and penetrates so 
much more deeply into the categories of truth than any 
pagan mythology. Quite apart from the great truth which 
it is the object of the Jews to express, there is an infinity of 
lesser truths embodied in the materials which they made use 
of to symbolise their meaning, all of which are derived 
from those depths of human experience and human feeling 
in which lies embedded the secret of human development; 
so that to those who have a proper capacity for compre- 
hension the whole literature glows with a rich and bril- 
liant significance even in those parts which appear most in- 
capable of intelligible interpretation. The trouble has 
been that it makes such an effective appeal to our own sub- 
jective consciousness that the reader becomes oblivious of 
the fact that it is a form of expression governed by canons 
of thought altogether different from our own. It is a 
mode of expression, therefore, that is bound to lead us to a 
totally wrong conception of what the Jews were trying to 
reveal, unless we can reintegrate in ourselves the point of 
view that dominated them at the very time that they con- 
ceived the great intuition. In other words, in studying the 
Old Testament narratives, we must not only remember that 
they are the expression of a subjective phase of conscious- 
ness, but we must also regard them in the light of all that 
has been already said with reference to the development 
of the religious consciousness, and the changes that this 
development induced in the external world. We cannot 
hope to understand them unless we know all that happened 
before Judaism appeared, in the development of the re- 
ligious idea; but the moment we regard them in this light 
they become at once brilliantly significant, and enable 


302 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

us clearly to perceive the real meaning of the vision of 
Jehovah. 

But there is another difficulty that confronts us in under- 
standing the literature of the Old Testament. This lit- 
erature, as it has come down to us, is, as we all know, a 
compilation from many sources which has been subjected to 
several processes of very thorough revision; and was, in 
particular, subjected to a very special process of redaction 
after the return of the Jews from their Babylonian exile. 
Now, in this final process of redaction, we must remem- 
ber that the editors behaved in exactly the same subjective 
manner as the people who wrote the earlier narratives. 
Their point of view differed very considerably from that 
of the writers of the earlier narratives, and in expressing 
and enforcing this point of view they felt themselves justi- 
fied, and were indeed impelled by their religious conscious- 
ness, to use these original narratives in whatever manner 
was most calculated to achieve their purpose. In other 
words, it is absolutely necessary for us, in dealing with the 
Old Testament in its present form, that we should con- 
stantly bear in mind the point of view of its latest redac- 
tors, and in order to understand this point of view, we 
must clearly understand the whole history of the Racial 
movement. Only by thus dealing with this literature can 
we hope to attain to its real significance; but if we study 
it in this careful and critical manner, then it will be easy 
enough to show that we have, in the original vision of 
Jehovah, a revelation of the true Creator of the uni- 
verse which makes the existence of God a scientific cer- 
tainty. 

The Jewish Racial movement attained its zenith some- 
where about a thousand years before Christ. About five 
hundred years before this period, history tells us of a great 


THE REVELATION OF GOD IN JEHOVAH 303 

increase of energy in the peoples of Egypt, of Mesopotamia, 
and of other Asiatic regions, such as we should expect 
to accompany the origin of a new Racial movement. In 
Egypt this new development gave rise to the glories of the 
Later Empire; in Mesopotamia it heralded the rise of the 
Assyrian power. But in both these regions the effects of 
the new development did not produce the full expansion 
of a Racial movement, nor did it lead to any new phase 
of human existence. It only expended itself in intensify- 
ing the energy of ideas and modes of existence which had 
already become prevalent in these regions as the result of 
other Racial movements. 

Two or three hundred years later, the Hebrew tribes first 
make their appearance in the historical perspective of hu- 
man evolution, as wandering bands of ignorant nomads in 
the deserts that lie adjacent to Palestine. They have been 
identified with the desert tribes of Khabiri, mentioned in 
the Tel-el-Amarna letters. The state of mental depriva- 
tion to which these tribes were reduced was so great that it 
is only of one of them, which was known, or became known 
in later times, under the name of Israel, that we possess any 
considerable knowledge. The larger number of the early 
Hebrew tribes, the Moabites, the Edomites, and others, have 
left behind them nothing to indicate to us at the present 
day that they ever existed, beyond perhaps a few stones; 
which assure us that one of these tribes, at least, worshipped 
a single god like the Israelites, and supply us with enough 
of their language to identify them racially with the Israel- 
ites, whose later activity gave to this Race a position of ex- 
traordinary importance in the world-drama of human evo- 
lution. 

We are told in the Old Testament that these early He- 
brew tribes set out on their wanderings in the desert at 


304 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

the express order of the god they worshipped. He com- 
pelled them to abandon all the amenities and the culture 
of a civilised mode of existence, to separate themselves from 
their fellows, and to become wild and ignorant inhabitants 
of regions in which it was scarcely possible to maintain hu- 
man existence, in order that they might worship him. 

This deity was the god of Abraham, of Isaac, and of 
Jacob; for, as the reader probably already knows, these 
figures in Genesis are symbolically representative of the 
early tribes of the Hebrew Race. He was known as El- 
Shaddai or Elohim; both names indicating, in their root 
meanings, that he was merely the mightiest or most intensi- 
fied embodiment of that divine nature or substance which 
men had hitherto worshipped in the form of the gods. 
That he was merely a pagan god is clear from many pas- 
sages in the older parts of the Old Testament, which have 
fortunately survived the obvious intention of the priestly 
redactors of this literature to identify him with Jehovah. 
In the third verse of the sixth chapter of Exodus, it is 
stated that the god worshipped by Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob, was not Jehovah. In the second, fourteenth, and 
fifteenth verses of the last chapter of the Book of Joshua 
the latter tells the children of Israel that their forefathers 
who lived on the other side of the river in olden days wor- 
shipped gods who were not Jehovah; and he exhorts them 
to make up their minds once for all which they will serve, 
the deity represented by the gods which their forefathers 
worshipped on the other side of the river in the desert, or 
the deity represented by Jehovah who had brought them 
across the river and had established them in the land of 
Canaan. In the second and fourth verses of the sixth chap- 
ter of Genesis it is stated that the most important element 
in the great wickedness of humanity, which was going to be 


THE REVELATION OF GOD IN JEHOVAH 305 

punished by the flood, was the sexual intercourse of the 
sons of God with the daughters of men. The deity is here 
distinctly referred to as belonging to a company of lesser 
gods, who were obviously those pagan gods in whose wor- 
ship, as we have seen, women were in the habit of prosti- 
tuting themselves, and of imagining that, in this sexual in- 
tercourse, they were being fertilised by the gods themselves. 
Although supreme, and so holy that he is about to destroy 
humanity because of its wickedness, he is distinctly and un- 
mistakably described in these verses as being of the same 
nature and of the same family as those gods who had driven 
human beings to this great sin. In all these passages, there- 
fore, the single god of the Hebrews is repeatedly described 
as belonging to the same class or family of gods as all 
other pagan gods. He still has the same nature, and is in- 
cluded in the same category of the divine, as the gods of 
the Egyptians, the Assyrians, and all other heathen nations. 
He is simply a unified conception of the divine which men 
had hitherto worshipped as multiform. In his appearance 
to Abraham in the Plain Mamre, moreover, he distinctly 
merges into his own being the three figures of the Brahmin 
trinity. Three men appear to Abraham and they are the 
Lord. The writer of the narrative refers to them indiffer- 
ently throughout the whole episode, and even in the same 
verse, as one and as three. Yet the three are all different 
characters, and behave differently; for whilst two, who 
might fitly represent Brahma and Siva, are absolutely above 
all feelings of compassion, and turn away from Abraham to 
carry out their dreadful purpose, the third remains behind, 
and shows himself compassionately humane and ready to 
forgive, even as Vishnu might. It is only if we admit it 
to be the fact that this early god of the Hebrews was simply 
a unified conception of the divine which men had hitherto 


306 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

worshipped as multiform, so that he could merge into his 
own being the three figures of the Brahmin trinity, that the 
story becomes intelligible. 

Moreover, the attitude of this god towards humanity was 
absolutely the same as that of the pagan gods. We have 
already seen that, in the higher pagan religions, an increas- 
ing tendency became manifest to draw the individual away 
from civilisation and from contact with his fellows in order 
that he might give up his whole attention to the worship of 
the deity; and amongst the Brahmins not only was the 
whole state of society so arranged that this state of self- 
isolation should be fostered, but every Brahmin was com- 
pelled, during the later years of his life, to separate him- 
self altogether from contact with his fellows, and to live 
the life of a recluse in the solitudes of Nature. It was 
also one of their great laws that no Brahmin should con- 
tinue to live in a country where the caste system did 
not prevail and where Brahman was not recognised as 
the supreme deity. Thus we see that, in compelling the 
early Hebrews to separate themselves from civilisation and 
to dwell in the inhospitable and barren recesses of the 
desert in order that they might worship him, their god gave 
evidence of exactly the same nature as that which was char- 
acteristic of the Brahman. 

The reader who has grasped what I have said in the pre- 
ceding chapters will readily understand that to this final 
embodiment of the pagan religious consciousness, the vicious 
and immoral practices which had been an integral part of 
the worship of the earlier gods were necessarily in a su- 
preme degree abhorrent. But because this single god was 
still a pagan god : because he was still regarded as possess- 
ing the same nature and belonging to the same category of 
the divine as other pagan gods : his worshippers necessarily 


THE REVELATION OF GOD IN JEHOVAH 307 

remained subject to a tendency to regard with fear and rev- 
erence, and even to worship, any of the latter with whom 
they came into contact. Since their own god was simply a 
unified conception of the divine which men had hitherto 
worshipped as multiform, the lesser gods of other nations 
were still divine beings to them, and claimed their worship. 
And when these alien gods happened to be of those whose 
worship was distinctly and outrageously immoral, their own 
passions could not but add force to the impulsion that drove 
them to satisfy this claim. For though the great passions 
were now condemned in the worship of the higher pagan 
gods, they had become an integral part of human nature, 
and continued to exercise a very potent influence on the 
religious attitude of the individual. Thus the practical 
result of the fact that their god — though single and holy 
— still remained a pagan god, was that the Hebrews were 
constitutionally excessively prone to forget his singleness 
and his holiness, and to become idolatrous and immoral in 
their worship whenever they came into contact with other 
nations. The only way in which they could avoid this 
tendency was to separate themselves entirely from other 
nations, and to avoid contact with strange gods. And 
in order to keep them to himself, their god drove them into 
the barren and burning solitudes of the desert, where they 
could barely subsist, and where everything that made life 
enjoyable in a material sense was denied to them. 

It is absolutely necessary that the reader should grasp 
the fact that the single god of the early Hebrews was a 
pagan god. For whoever presumes to study the evolution- 
ary significance of religious ideas as they have progressively 
revealed themselves in humanity without this understand- 
ing, might inadvertently stumble past the crowning event 
in the history of the Hebrew Race, without the slightest 


308 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

appreciation of its intrinsic value, or of its supreme im- 
portance in the world-drama of human evolution. 

This crowning event in the history of the Hebrew Race 
is the revelation of Jehovah. For suddenly, about two 
hundred years after the Racial movement had begun, some 
of these tribes who were known, or afterwards became 
known, under the name of Israel, were affected by a com- 
pletely new revelation of the religious consciousness; and 
under the. impulse of this new revelation they separated 
themselves from the other Hebrew tribes, abandoned their 
life in the desert and, in violation of the law which had 
hitherto imposed this mode of life on them, they crossed 
the Jordan and established themselves in a land compara- 
tively fertile and pleasant to live in, which was already 
inhabited by the highly civilised Canaanites; and had, only 
a short while before, been a flourishing province in the 
empire of Egypt. The new revelation, under the impulse 
of which the Israelites separated themselves from the other 
Hebrew tribes and forsook all their laws and traditions, 
was the vision of Jehovah. And what I want to make 
clear in this chapter is the fact that, although Jehovah 
was revealed to the Israelites by the same subjective con- 
sciousness as had revealed the other gods to the pagans, 
vet the great intuition, as it revealed itself to them, rep- 
resented a reality absolutely different from the realities 
signalised in consciousness by these other gods, and stood 
in a category quite different from them, as well as from 
the single god whom the other Hebrew tribes worshipped. 

In the first place, the fact that the new revelation which 
came to the Israelites was one which involved a complete 
transformation of the Deity is signalised in the very name 
of Jehovah. The name of Jehovah in its root meaning 
signifies “He will be” or “He will become”; and implies a 


THE REVELATION OF GOD IN JEHOVAH 309 

complete change of condition. There is nothing about the 
name of Jehovah to cause it to have been chosen for its 
sublime purpose except this very meaning. When the 
Deity revealed Himself to Moses under the name of Je- 
hovah, it was clear that something special was meant, and 
that this something special must be signalised by His 
name. The thing signalised in the name is the fact that 
the Deity worshipped by the Israelites will become some- 
thing quite different when they worship Jehovah. In 
other words, in crossing Jordan and trying to mingle with 
the Canaanites, it is clear that the Israelites believed they 
were obeying the behest of a supreme being who was en- 
tirely different in his essential nature from the single god 
hitherto worshipped by the other Hebrews. 

The proof of this interpretation of the essential mean- 
ing of the name Jehovah lies in the literature of the Old 
Testament. The whole of this literature is, indeed, but 
an expression of the great fact signalised in the divine 
name. Everywhere in this literature the distinction and 
separateness of Jehovah from all other gods is repeatedly 
emphasised as if it were the very essence of the new revela- 
tion. Jehovah makes the recognition of this distinction 
and separateness the chief obligation which He imposes 
on His people. He is constantly reiterating the fact that 
He is not merely the only God, but one who stands apart 
in a separate category from that occupied by the gods of 
the pagan world. His jealousy in this respect is one of 
His chief attributes, and throughout the whole of this lit- 
erature the same indication is constantly repeated that Je- 
hovah is God alone — Who cannot allow any other gods to 
be mentioned in the same breath as Himself; and He re- 
gards the worship of these other gods as the greatest of all 
sins. He claims this distinction as His supreme preroga- 


310 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

tive and characteristic, and the difference between Him 
and the pagan gods is so great that He cannot be wor- 
shipped as they are worshipped. It is not merely that He 
is a more moral god, or a more just god, than the pagan 
gods. Some of the stories of the Old Testament, indeed, 
appear to have been written or incorporated in the sacred 
canon with the express intention of belittling the impor- 
tance of morality, in order that this attribute should not 
blind the children of Israel to the absolute and complete 
distinction which existed between Jehovah and all the gods 
of the pagan world. The fact was that the distinction and 
separateness that Jehovah claimed from all pagan gods 
was not to be expressed simply in terms of morality and 
holiness. That the great intuition which was the birth- 
right of Israel was that of a God immaculate and supreme 
in these respects, is beyond question; but His holiness and 
righteousness were not in themselves a sufficient distinc- 
tion to differentiate Him from the world of pagan gods 
in the absolute sense signalised in the name of Jehovah. 
For the pagan gods had been for a long time becoming 
more and more moral, and the worship of many of them 
already necessitated the suppression and obliteration of 
human passions; Ahura-mazda, the Persian god, was the 
embodiment of a religious consciousness which utterly con- 
demned everything that was unholy and vicious in the at- 
titude of those who approached him. Therefore to say 
that Jehovah was merely holier and purer than other pagan 
gods was not to say that He was absolutely, in His es- 
sential nature, different from them. And that is exactly 
the idea that the whole literature of the Old Testament is 
intended to convey. 

Now this distinction and separateness from other gods 
which Jehovah so emphatically demands as His supreme pre- 


THE REVELATION OF GOD IN JEHOVAH 31 1 

rogative, does constitute a very deep and fundamental differ- 
ence between Jehovah and all other gods that had hitherto 
been worshipped. For none of the other gods had claimed 
the distinction or had objected to be worshipped in company 
with other gods, even though they might be supreme in this 
company. The greatest gods of this company were not 
more supernatural or more divine than any one of the mil- 
lions of demons or spirits that peopled the same world. 
They might be more powerful, but they were identical 
in substance and nature. Thus the religious consciousness 
of Man had hitherto revealed to him one supernatural 
world, tenanted by varying numbers of gods, according to 
its degree of development ; and these smaller gods, whether 
they were one or whether they were many, were all indi- 
cations in consciousness of one and the same category of 
realities, viz., the results in the individual of the cosmic 
process that was operating on humanity. But Jehovah 
was a Being who stood right behind and separate from this 
supernatural world hitherto revealed — alone, eternal, and 
altogether transcendental. He was a reflection in con- 
sciousness of a fact just as real as any of the facts signal- 
ised by the pagan gods, but the creative Being that He 
signalised was a reality infinitely removed and separate 
from the creative agency — signalised in the pagan gods — 
determining the single cycle of the evolutionary process that 
was raising man to a higher level of organisation and capac- 
ity. 

That the divine impulsion generated by the original 
vision of Jehovah was one that would necessarily induce 
the change in the life of the Israelites that I have already 
indicated, and make them abandon the life of the desert 
and try to return to a civilised existence in a pleasant and 
fertile land, is clear from the earlier account of the Crea- 


312 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

tion contained in the second and subsequent chapters of 
Genesis, which are much older than the first chapter. The 
beginning of all things in this account is the dry and bar- 
ren land of the desert where no rain had fallen, and where 
no man had tilled the ground. The moment the vision 
of Jehovah manifested itself to him, the Israelite became 
aware that instead of the barren waste he had hitherto 
lived in, the Creator had made a good and beautiful world, 
full of everything that might conduce to the satisfaction 
of his senses, and that it was ordained that he should live 
and possess this beautiful world and not the barren waste 
he had hitherto been accustomed to. Hence the impulse 
that arose in the children of Israel to leave the desert and 
to return to civilisation ; and the story in these old chapters 
goes on to express in symbolic manner with extraordinary 
accuracy the whole situation as it presented itself to the 
Israelites when this account was written. Right in the 
midst of their vision of Jehovah, there existed an element 
which, if they surrendered themselves to it, would inevit- 
ably destroy this vision and the promise that it held for 
them, so that they would be driven out of this beautiful 
world to live once more in conditions of unutterable hard- 
ship. In the midst of the Garden of Eden there was a 
tree, the fruit of which was so poisonous that it was capa- 
ble of developing in them the knowledge of the pagan 
gods, and thus of destroying in them that vision of Je- 
hovah which had also revealed to them the beauty and 
promise of the world that He had created. The sin of 
Israel was the fact that they did eat of the fruit of the 
tree; and as a result had arisen the subsequent desolation 
of Israel. Conscious now of evil as well as of good, 
they had to wander forth into a world which had become 
once again as hard and pitiless as it had been to them in 


THE REVELATION OF GOD IN JEHOVAH 313 

their previous state. The Israelites, I must repeat again, 
were subjective. In these self-revelations of their religious 
consciousness, they were not attempting to explain what 
had occurred in the world thousands or millions of years 
before they came into existence: they were simply reveal- 
ing themselves and that vision of Jehovah which, for them- 
selves, was the beginning of all things. 

We know fairly well what actually happened to the 
children of Israel when they crossed the Jordan to mingle 
with the Canaanites. They did not conquer the land and 
destroy its inhabitants in the wholesale manner described 
in the Book of Joshua; they took, instead, something like 
250 years to establish themselves in it; and it is clear from 
the vicissitudes that befell their high ideal that they were 
only too ready to mingle in friendly fashion with the 
Canaanites, to intermarry with them, and to adopt their 
civilisation. But this intimacy was too much for them. 
Because their Racial god was a pagan god, they could not 
help falling victims to the worship of the lesser gods of 
the Canaanites the moment they intermingled with them, 
married with them, and lived with them on terms of social 
friendship. The revelation of Jehovah was one only 
grasped at first by the most highly developed of the chil- 
dren of Israel — great masses of them remained faithful to 
the older idea. Thus it is constantly said of them that 
they were stubborn; in other words, that their religious 
ideas were very difficult to change. They were just as 
stubborn in those early days as they have been in the sub- 
sequent ages of the world’s history. But the fact was, in 
those earlier times, they were stubborn in their loyalty to 
the pagan gods whom their forefathers worshipped. 
Their passions awoke at the contact with the Canaanites, 
and flooded their consciousness of Jehovah with the fouler 


314 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

ecstasies that belonged to the worship of the heathen gods. 
This worship dragged them down from their high estate, 
and they became evermore incapable of realising in all its 
fulness and sublimity the great intuition which was their 
birthright. But the lost intuition was the source of their 
energy and the expression of their unity ; and in their fallen 
condition they became split up into a congery of small and 
separate communities living in the midst or in the neigh- 
bourhood of alien peoples, who regarded them with ill- 
disguised hostility; and some of whom were far more war- 
like and dangerous than the effeminate and thoroughly 
vicious Canaanites. We may obtain a glimpse of the 
vicissitudes of the Israelites at this stage of their history 
in the Book of Judges; and it is clear that, as a race, they 
came very near to complete destruction, and that the great 
intuition which had brought them into being, and which 
was so important for the further development of mankind, 
was very nearly obliterated from their minds. But they 
pulled themselves up in time to save themselves and the 
world, in some measure, from this fate. Listening to 
the prophets who rose amongst them and voiced the idea 
that they had proved recreant to the only God who could 
save them from destruction, they gradually withdrew 
themselves from the perverted life into which they had 
been ensnared; and, uniting themselves under the rule of 
one king, they struck out once more for the reintegration 
of the Racial existence, and that revelation of God which 
was its expression in consciousness. Under the kingship 
of David they appeared, for a short time, to have extrica- 
ted themselves from their difficulties, to have triumphed 
over their enemies, and to have re-established Jehovah in 
all His separateness and sublimity as the one and only 
God of Israel. But the effect of their sin still clung to 


THE REVELATION OF GOD IN JEHOVAH 315 

them, and the moment that the genius of David was no 
longer capable of controlling the situation, these effects 
constantly manifested themselves in repeated tendencies 
to break away from the true worship which was the source 
of their energy and the expression of their unity, and the 
kingdom of Israel became divided against itself; and in 
its resulting weakness the Race could scarcely maintain 
itself against the hostility of those whom the sword of 
David had formerly vanquished. Finally the two 
branches into which this Race had split up were driven 
off into captivity, and the reign of Israel in the land which 
they had entered with such joyful anticipations was at 
an end. The greater part of the whole Race fell right 
away from its old traditions and became absorbed in the 
peoples amongst whom they were captive. A few alone 
remained true to the great intuition which was the dis- 
tinctive mark of Israel, and these were allowed to return 
to the land which they still regarded as the land which 
Jehovah had ordered them to enter. The select few who 
returned were zealots, in whose bosoms the ancient intui- 
tion of their Race reigned supreme, having proved itself 
permanent in spite of all the tragic experiences which had 
befallen them. They had no doubt as to the truth of 
the intuition, but the fact with which they were con- 
fronted was this: that the great intuition, instead of lead- 
ing them to the happiness which it had seemed to promise 
had, instead, resulted in a series of catastrophies which 
had reduced them to their present condition of misery and 
servitude. In asking themselves why these catastrophies 
had resulted, they arrived at the conclusion which ap- 
peared to be warranted by the facts, that they were the 
result of their mingling with alien peoples. This was an 
obvious violation of the original law of the Hebrew 


3 1 6 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

tribes, which had compelled them to separate them- 
selves completely from civilised nations, and seek 
in the solitude and vagrant life of the desert the condi- 
tions in which alone they could worship their single God. 
This, therefore, appeared to them the great sin of the 
children of Israel; and they concluded that Jehovah, in 
impelling them to possess the land had, at the same time, 
intended them to destroy its inhabitants root and branch, 
so that the children of Israel could have continued to live 
in Palestine just as separate from these alien peoples as 
they were in the desert itself. Jehovah, in other words, 
had intended them to enjoy the land, but to enjoy it by 
themselves, and not in the company of those whose friend- 
ship had caused the fall of their Race. The reader must 
remember that, at this critical point in their history, the 
Racial wave of inspiraton was at an end. They were no 
longer working under the specific inspiration which had 
originally revealed Jehovah, but under the influence of a 
religious consciousness which was fundamentally pagan, 
and which, apart from this specific inspiration, was only 
with great difficulty capable of realising any such concep- 
tion as that embodied in the figure of Jehovah. It thus 
appeared to them that their great sin was the breaking of 
the law of exclusiveness and separation, which had of old 
driven their forefathers to live in the desert; and they felt 
it incumbent on them to re-impose this law in all its sever- 
ity, in order that the Jehovistic idea might be preserved 
from destruction. This point of view is clearly expressed 
in the Books of Nehemiah and Ezra, which give us a vivid 
idea of the state of mind prevalent amongst the returned 
exiles. Thus, when they set about to rebuild their 
temple, they also set about to reconstruct the philosophy 
of their religion on the basis of this conclusion, and sub- 


THE REVELATION OF GOD IN JEHOVAH 317 

jected the whole of the literature which was to serve as 
its permanent expression to a severe redaction, with a view 
of giving the whole and every part of it a character which 
would impress this idea on all succeeding generations. 
In this redaction they completely identified Jehovah with 
the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and thus made the 
law of exclusiveness an integral part of the rule imposed 
on His people by Jehovah. They combined the tradi- 
tions of the two early migrations of their Race, the one 
from civilisation into the desert, and the one from 
the desert back into civilisation, into one coherent 
whole; and thus made it appear that Abram only left 
Babylonia in order to survey the land of Promise, and 
that the children of Israel only left Egypt to worship their 
God in the desert in order that they should eventually 
possess themselves of Palestine. As a matter of fact, the 
manners and the morals of the Canaanites were exactly 
similar to those of the Babylonians, and forty years before 
the Hebrew tribes appeared on the borders of Palestine 
that country was an integral part of the Egyptian Empire, 
strongly held by the military power that Egypt then pos- 
sessed; so that in neither case would either Abram or the 
children of Israel have changed their surroundings by em- 
barking on their several expeditions — each would simply 
have found in Palestine the same conditions which they 
had left behind them in the land which they had been 
ordered to abandon. If it be objected to this that the 
intention was that they should obtain the sovereignty of 
Palestine by miraculous power, the obvious answer is that 
they could, by the exercise of the same miraculous power, 
have easily obtained the sovereignty of Babylonia or of 
Egypt without going into the desert at all ; and both Egypt 
and Babylonia are lands infinitely more fertile and more 


3 i8 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

pleasant to live in than the comparatively wild and barren 
hills of Judea, which the Israelites eventually occupied. 
But however incongruous these narratives appear to us in 
their present setting, it was a vital necessity for the 
priestly redactors who wished to make the law of exclu- 
siveness an integral part of their religion, to construe them 
in this way. Thus they made it appear that Jehovah- 
Elohim was the God of Israel. Obviously Israel had 
broken a fundamental law of this composite deity when 
it mingled in friendly fashion with the Canaanites after 
crossing the Jordan. In order to emphasise this point 
they wrote the greater part of the Book of Joshua, and 
gave to it an important place in the sacred canon; and 
all the mythology which centred round Elohim was freely 
made use of to express the new conception. 

In this way they substituted for the original vision of 
Jehovah that composite deity of the Hexateuch, whose 
character has proved such a stumbling block to those who 
read the Old Testament in a casual manner. And this 
they did without hesitation, because they believed that not 
merely had the aspect of the material world completely 
changed for the Israelites as the result of their sin, but 
the attitude of the Creator towards them — and therefore 
His own character — had also completely altered. This is 
the essential conception of the religious philosophy of later 
Judaism, and the reader must thoroughly grasp its full 
meaning if he is to understand the later development 
which so completely obscured the original vision of 
Jehovah. The old memory of what the vision of Jehovah 
had originally implied was probably never completely 
lost, even by those priestly redactors who moulded the re- 
ligion into its later form. But the idea was that the sin 
of Israel had completely changed the attitude of the deity 


THE REVELATION OF GOD IN JEHOVAH 319 

towards His whole creation. It was supposed, and in- 
deed it was the only manner in which the subsequent 
vicissitudes of Israel could be explained, that He was a 
being who regarded the material world, and the men who 
had sinned against Him, with feelings of disgust and ab- 
horrence that approximated very closely to those which 
were characteristic of the higher pagan gods. The divine 
presentation of which they were conscious was therefore 
no longer that of the true Creator of the material universe. 
For as the true Creator of the universe is naturally respon- 
sible for everything that He has created, it is inconceiv- 
able that He should regard with disgust and abhorrence 
His creatures, even though they are rebellious and sinful; 
for, after all, their capacity for rebellion and for sinful- 
ness must be the result of certain elements whose existence 
is sanctioned in His own scheme of creation. The concep- 
tion approximates in this respect very closely to that of 
the Brahman, and is widely opposite to that involved in 
the original vision of Jehovah. It differs from the con- 
ception of the Brahman only in this, that this attitude was 
not considered a permanent one; it was the specific result 
of the sin of the people, and it was understood that, after 
a certain time, if proper measures were taken to expiate 
that sin, the attitude would alter, and the divine being 
would once again become the loving Creator manifest in 
the original vision of Jehovah. The promise of the future 
thus became the hope and the sustenance of the Jew 
through all the vicissitudes to which the burden which he 
was carrying made him liable. But in the meanwhile, and 
until this redemption should declare itself, the worship of 
this altered deity imposed on the Jew a law which demanded 
from him as complete a sacrifice of the material happiness 
and welfare of humanity as the worship of any of the pagan 


320 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

gods had done. This sacrifice was symbolised in a ritual as 
universal and all-pervading, as complicated, as mystical, and 
as sacramental as that of the Brahmins themselves; and 
in human relations they vented on every individual who 
was different from themselves, or who ventured in the 
least degree to infringe the letter of the law thus imposed, 
the full disgust and abhorrence which they conceived to be 
the attitude of their Creator towards sinful humanity. In 
other words, the divine impulsion which issued from the 
composite conception of the deity was that bitter 
sectarianism which made the cult of Jehovah and 
the Jews themselves so obnoxious to the cultured Greeks 
and Romans during the last two or three hundred years 
of the post-exilic age. 


The original vision of Jehovah is admirably portrayed 
in the beautiful myth of the Creation constituting the first 
chapter of Genesis. Although clearly written by the same 
group of priestly editors who were responsible for the 
perversion of the great intuition in later times, there is no 
doubt that this document presents us with the intuition 
in its original form. For although it was written several 
hundreds of years after the chapters which describe 
Adam’s great sin and degradation, it was purposely placed 
first by its priestly authors in the sequence of mythical 
narratives which form the basis of the whole superstruc- 
ture of sacred literature, although there was already in- 
cluded in the story of Adam’s sin an account of the crea- 
tion of the world. It thus stands as a representation of 
the primary intuition of Jehovah before the great sin of 
Israel, typified in the story of Adam, had so altered the 
disposition of Jehovah towards His people as to lead Him 


THE REVELATION OF GOD IN JEHOVAH 321 

to impose the harsh law which, in the opinion of 
Nehemiah and his successors, was absolutely necessary to 
preserve the Jehovistic idea from complete extinction. 
The change in the disposition of Jehovah was the result 
of the sin of Israel. In the first chapter of Genesis, we 
see Jehovah as He was before or apart from the degrada- 
tion of Israel. It is therefore from our point of view one 
of the most important fragments of the Old Testament; 
and it will yield to careful study a very clear indication 
of the essential significance of the great intuition to those 
who first became conscious of it. 

In this chapter its authors are expressing themselves 
through the medium of an earlier myth of Babylonian 
origin. This form of expression, as all Biblical students 
are aware, is one very commonly employed in the litera- 
ture of the Old Testament. It was indeed a peculiarly 
valuable method of expression; for although the Jews 
handled these myths very ruthlessly, and modified them 
very considerably in adapting them to their own purposes, 
yet the mental atmosphere in which they had originated 
always clung to them in a greater or lesser degree; and 
the representation of Jehovah thus depicted against a re- 
ceding background of pagan ideas revealed itself in a per- 
spective that constantly reminded the individual of His 
distinction and separateness from the supernatural world 
which men had hitherto worshipped as divine. And from 
our point of view, it is exceedingly fortunate that we ac- 
tually possess the original myth on which the account is 
founded, so that it is possible for us, by contrasting the 
two narratives, to see clearly the points that its authors 
were emphasising. 

The original myth is, in fact, the Babylonian myth of 
the creation which I have already referred to in a previous 


322 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

chapter. There is a general consensus of opinion amongst 
Biblical scholars as to this fact. Indeed, several passages 
in the first chapter of Genesis might be to us absolutely 
void of meaning if we could not help our understanding 
by referring to the older myth. We might not under- 
stand the creation of light before the celestial bodies ap- 
pear, for we know there is no light in the external world 
but that which is emitted by the celestial bodies; and 
the account of the separation of the waters into two 
equal masses above and below the firmament might be 
similarly unintelligible, for we know that no permanent 
collections of water comparable to the oceans exist in the 
sky; they certainly do not anywhere in the neighbourhood 
of Palestine, where for six months in the year you will 
never see a cloud. Again, the six separate phases in the 
development of the creation occupying six separate days 
might seem to us absolutely incompatible with the facts 
that science has established. But reference to the Baby- 
lonian myth at once dispels all obscurity. The light that 
appeared as the result of the first act of creation is the 
light emitted by the gods of the second stage of the re- 
ligious development, typified in the figure of Marduk, the 
god of the rising sun; and the celestial bodies which later 
on appeared in the heavens are the greater gods which the 
religious development revealed to the individual in the 
later stages of its development, that dwelt only in the 
celestial bodies, and not in the great number of material 
objects which were haunted by the demons and spirits of 
earlier times. The separation of the waters into two equal 
masses above and below the firmament is likewise the 
splitting of the body of Tiamat into two halves; as Tiamat 
was identified with the ocean, in the fearful depths of 
which she was supposed to dwell. Finally, the division 


THE REVELATION OF GOD IN JEHOVAH 323 

of the act of creation into a sequence of events occupying 
six days is obviously due to the fact that the original myth 
is written in seven separate parts, in six of which the ac- 
count of the creation is consummated, whilst the seventh 
contains a hymn in praise of Marduk, the god who created 
man. In this way, the authors of the first chapter of 
Genesis affirmed in terms that would be well understood 
in the mental atmosphere of those days that all and every- 
thing that had come into existence throughout the six 
stages of development described in the Babylonian myth 
had been created by Jehovah and by Jehovah alone. 
These points of resemblance between the two narratives 
are of no importance whatever except in so far as they 
assure us that the later one was based on the Babylonian 
myth, and that the Jewish writers actually had this myth 
in their minds, if not actually before them, when they 
wrote the first chapter of Genesis. The real significance 
of this chapter lies in the points where the two accounts 
differ from each other. 

Thus, in the first chapter of Genesis, the account is so 
modified as to eliminate from it the recognition of any 
gods but Jehovah, and each separate phase is specifically 
referred to and described with a monotonous and most 
significant reiteration as a creative act of Jehovah. The 
Babylonian myth contains elements which have no rela- 
tion to the creation of the material world, and refer to 
developments in the supernatural world of the gods. The 
language signalising these elements is retained in several 
passages of the first chapter of Genesis, but the elements 
themselves are not regarded as supernatural; the language 
is simply used in a masterly manner to set forth in strong 
relief the infinite separateness and distinction of Jehovah 
from the pagan gods without any mention being made of 


324 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

the latter. The record of happenings in the supernatural 
world of the gods is converted into a sequence of events in 
the creation of a material world by Jehovah, by using the 
symbolism of the pagan myth. In this manner the au- 
thors of Genesis degrade the gods from their high position 
as supernatural beings, and place them in relation to 
Jehovah in the same category of things as the objects and 
processes of the material world; and thus, in the mental 
atmosphere of the times, they set forth in strong relief the 
infinite separateness and distinction of Jehovah from the 
supernatural world hitherto revealed, and make it mani- 
fest that He alone was divine, eternal, and altogether 
transcendental. 

Furthermore, the creation depicted in Genesis is that of 
the material universe, the world that is palpable to men’s 
senses, and the one in which he lives his daily life. In 
one word, it is the world of objective reality. It is not 
the supernatural world which the gods inhabit, nor the 
mystical world opened up to man by his religious con- 
sciousness, nor the world that he might inhabit after death. 
The old Babylonian myth is principally concerned with a 
sequence of events in the supernatural world of the gods, 
and it is clearly a self-revelation of the development of 
the religious consciousness which I have described in the 
preceding chapters up to the point which the Babylonians 
had reached. In sharp contrast to this, the authors of 
Genesis declare the material universe as the only existent 
reality, and emphasise the fact that it is this material uni- 
verse that Jehovah has created, and nothing else. It is 
the earth with its land and waters; the celestial bodies that 
furnish light and warmth to the earth, and determine its 
seasons; all the categories of things that live on the earth, 
each growing and developing after the manner of their 


THE REVELATION OF GOD IN JEHOVAH 325 

kind — that is to say, in the manner established in the nat- 
ural order of things; it is all these components of the 
physical world, and they only, that are so carefully 
enumerated as existing, and having been created. Jeho- 
vah, in short, was the Creator of that which we recognise 
as the real objective world; and the tremendous signifi- 
cance of this revelation is set forth in strong relief against 
the receding background of pagan ideas furnished by the 
language of the older myth, which is used as the medium 
of expression. 

Furthermore, this material world is good and beautiful. 
Jehovah takes an infinite pleasure in creating it, and re- 
joices repeatedly at its goodness and its beauty. It is 
therefore the result, in respect of everything that it contains, 
of the conscious exercise of his creative power directed to 
a purpose which He successfully accomplishes. Now there 
is nothing more foreign to the whole philosophy of Ori- 
ental paganism than the conception that the material 
world is a good and beautiful thing. According to this 
philosophy, the material world was not good and beauti- 
ful; every particle of it was infested with hideous and 
malignant demons, whose sole occupation was to afflict 
human beings with an infinity of misery; and the attitude 
of the higher pagan gods towards the material world was 
one of utter abhorrence and disgust. Brahman, for in- 
stance, although the creative figure in the Brahman trinity, 
was not the creator of the material universe; it had only 
come into existence through a flaw in his creative power. 
From the point of view of the Brahmin religious conscious- 
ness, indeed, it had no real existence. It was merely a 
series of unreal phantasms and illusions with which the 
demons tortured the minds of men; and the first thing that 
a Brahmin had to do in order to attain to the supreme 


326 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

presence was to realise the fact that there was no such 
thing as the material universe, and to train his senses so 
that they should not perceive it. The only world that the 
Brahmin recognised as a reality, and the only world that 
the Brahman had created, was the mystical realm of a 
purely subjective ideation. It was this subjective world 
alone that the pagan religious consciousness recognised; it 
was this world that the gods created for themselves, and 
for those mortals whom they favoured. That which we 
recognise as the real material world they hated and ab- 
horred. In sharp contrast to this, Jehovah is depicted as 
the true creator of the material universe, who actually 
glories in the fact that it is the material world, and nothing 
else, that He has created. 

Finally, we come to what is perhaps the most signifi- 
cant point in this wonderful revelation. Jehovah creates 
men and women, but He creates them, not in order that 
they should worship and sacrifice to Him, but simply that 
they should enjoy and rule over this beautiful world that 
He has created. He lays no law on them except this, 
that they should make this beautiful world a terrestrial 
paradise for themselves by emulating in their mutual rela- 
tions His own attitude to themselves. No student of 
comparative religion that I know of has gauged the tre- 
mendous significance of this great contrast between Jeho- 
vah and the pagan gods, especially the pagan gods men- 
tioned in the Babylonian myth of the creation. It is not 
merely that Jehovah was a benevolent god — that is a mat- 
ter of quite subsidiary importance, especially in view of 
the fact that there were amongst the pagan gods some who 
were benevolently inclined to human beings. The point 
is this, that since Jehovah did not create human beings in 
order that they should worship Him and sacrifice to Him, 


THE REVELATION OF GOD IN JEHOVAH 327 

it is clearly evident that the worship and sacrifice of hu- 
man beings was not necessary to His existence. His ex- 
istence was, therefore, something absolutely independent 
of and separate from that of human beings, or of the ma- 
terial world which He had created. It did not matter to 
Him in the least whether men sacrificed to Him; His ex- 
istence was not dependent on their worship or their sacri- 
fice. The existence of the pagan gods had been dependent 
on the worship and sacrifice of human beings. They had 
to be fed with the same food that nourished men, and they 
had to be sustained by an endless ritual of worship and 
sacrifice which finally deprived the individual of all joy 
in his earthly existence. Jehovah was absolutely different 
in this respect. His existence was independent of any- 
thing that human beings might do, and their worship and 
sacrifice was therefore not merely unnecessary but savoured 
of insult to Him. He was not like some of the pagan gods, 
benevolently inclined towards human beings in return for 
their worship and sacrifice; He was necessarily a loving 
God, because His independent and separate existence made 
it absolutely unnecessary for Him to saddle His creatures 
with the burden of His maintenance. And thus, without 
suffering any loss Himself, He was able to direct the men 
and women He had created to devote their whole atten- 
tion to the material world and the material existence which 
He had given them. And as all the sin and misery that 
had come into the world was due to the worship and sacri- 
fice that the gods demanded, the existence which He had 
thus provided for human beings was one necessarily free 
from sin and from misery. The motive force of the whole 
creation was one of love, and its beauty and perfection 
were to be consummated by the happiness of the indi- 
viduals whom He had created in such a way as to be 


328 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

capable of emulating in their mutual relations His own 
attitude towards themselves. 

In spite of the subsequent perversion of the sublime 
vision, the literature of the Old Testament teems with in- 
dications that confirm this interpretation of the revelation 
contained in the 1st chapter of Genesis. With regard to 
the first point of this interpretation, that the Kingdom 
of God is this material world, and this material existence, 
the confirmation is so absolute and so generally admitted 
that it scarcely needs emphasising. Throughout the whole 
literature of the Old Testament, it is clear that the future 
life and all that relates to it stood quite outside the phi- 
losophy of its religion. I do not say that this philosophy 
denies the existence of a future life. The belief in a God 
altogether separate from this material world implies the 
belief in a state of existence separate and distinct from the 
material one; and nothing in this work must be taken to 
imply that there is, either in the religious or in the scien- 
tific view of things, any reason to deny the possibility, or 
even the probability, of a future life. But it is quite cer- 
tain that the religious philosophy inculcated by the Old 
Testament is not affected in the very slightest degree by 
this possibility or probability. The future life is, indeed, 
scarcely referred to at all; certainly not in any of the ordi- 
nances received from the inspiration which revealed Jeho- 
vah. When we consider the fundamental importance of 
this belief in every one of the higher pagan religions, the 
way it is treated in the literature of the Old Testament 
cannot fail to strike us with a startling emphasis. The 
peculiarity could not have been due to the perversion of 
the original vision of Jehovah, for since all the pagan re- 
ligions emphasised it, any effects due to the perversion must 
have operated by infusing this belief into the original vision 


THE REVELATION OF GOD IN JEHOVAH 329 

and not by obliterating it. Nothing can therefore be more 
certain than the indication afforded by the whole literature 
of the Old Testament that this peculiarity of the Hebrew 
religion was an essential feature of the revelation of the 
true Jehovah. 

The attitude of Jehovah towards sacrifice indicated in 
the first chapter of Genesis is strongly emphasised in those 
old prophetic writings which were subsequently incorpo- 
rated into the canon of Holy Scripture, but probably date 
from a time when the period of Racial inspiration was not 
extinct, and still survived amongst certain gifted indi- 
viduals. According to these prophets, sacrifice had no 
place in their religion, and was rather of the nature of an 
insult to God. Amos makes Jehovah say: “I hate, I con- 
demn your festivals and in your feasts I delight not. For 
when you offer me your burnt offerings and gifts I do not 
regard them with favour, and your fatted peace offerings 
I will not look at. Take away from me the clamour of 
your songs: and the music of your viols I will not hear.” 
Repeatedly they assert that righteous conduct towards each 
other is the only service of men that is acceptable in the 
eyes of God, and as repeatedly He is proclaimed the lov- 
ing Creator of all men, incapable of assuming towards His 
creation an eternal attitude of anger or hatred. In these 
prophetic writings the self-revelation, indeed, touches the 
profoundest depths of the situation. In some of the chap- 
ters of Isaiah, in particular, the inspiration rises to such 
a point of intensity that it includes within the vision of 
Jehovah a consciousness of the great importance of this 
revelation to the rest of humanity, and also a consciousness 
of the fact that it was this burden that Israel had to carry 
for the rest of the world that made her so weak and 
despicable among the nations. Down in the depths of 


330 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

their self-consciousness, these prophets were inspired with 
a full sense of the great drama in which they were taking 
part. They felt, in a purely subjective manner, the opera- 
tion of the will of God on humanity, and realised fully 
that although the cosmic process thus generated had 
brought sin and suffering into the world, its ultimate ob- 
jective was the raising of humanity to a level of power 
and dignity far beyond that of any living creatures in the 
past. They felt that the knowledge of the true God which 
was the peculiar possession of Israel was absolutely indis- 
pensable to the due fulfilment of the great process, and 
they also felt that the position of Israel in this respect was 
unique. The inspiration which had revealed to her this 
knowledge was not one that could repeat itself in the suc- 
ceeding ages; and as it was the unique privilege of Israel 
to possess this knowledge, so it was her bounden duty to 
remain true to it; although they fully recognised that their 
loyalty to the Jehovistic idea was the cause of all those in- 
ternal dissensions which enfeebled them as a nation, and 
rendered them contemptible to the rest of the world. 


CHAPTER XI 


REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST 

I have argued in the last chapter that if the revelation of 
the true Creator was an important factor in the consumma- 
tion of the Generic process, then it was inevitable that the 
revelation should take place. From the point we have 
reached in our demonstration of the great process it is easy 
to show that the revelation did subserve a useful purpose in 
it, and was, indeed, indispensable to the complete fulfilment 
of the development in progress. 

The period of growth was at an end. The Generic pro- 
cess had, so far, added to the brain of the individual the 
substance of a new mind-organ, which had hitherto remained 
detached from the outside world. In order that the 
great process should completely fulfil itself, it was 
necessary that this Generic substance should enter into re- 
lation with the outside world, and become an instrument 
of objective intelligence and of civilisation. But the char- 
acteristics which the necessities of the period of growth had 
stamped on the individual were such as to render it ex- 
ceedingly difficult for this further elaboration to take place. 
The period of growth had filled him with terror and hatred 
of the material world, it had engrafted on him the great 
Generic passions, and it had made him inhumanly selfish. 
The energy of the Generic development was now going to 
subside, and thus the force which had infused these char- 
acteristics into him was gradually going to lessen. But, on 
the other hand, the new mind-organ which was the very 
embodiment of all these characteristics, was going to come 

33i 


332 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

into relation with the outside world, and thus become in 
an increasing degree susceptible to its influences. The out- 
side world was full of influences capable of stimulating into 
renewed and heightened activity these very characteristics. 
The weakening of these characteristics, through the waning 
energy of growth, was more than compensated for by the 
increased liability to external temptation and stimulation. 
Now that the period of growth was at an end, and the 
necessities of the Generic process required the individual to 
enter on a new path altogether different in every respect 
from that which humanity had been treading for so many 
thousands of years, these characteristics became a serious 
and almost insurmountable obstacle to his advancement. 
They had been imposed on him, and were kept alive in him, 
by his religious consciousness; and as the latter was the 
most powerful of all the factors that controlled him, it was 
only his religious consciousness itself that could relieve him 
of his burden and determine his movement in the new direc- 
tion. 

As the energy of the Generic wave began to subside, the 
civilising influence of each Racial movement would once 
more become effective, and this would necessarily make for 
morality and for civilisation. Forasmuch as civilisation 
implies the harmonious living together of a large mass of 
human beings, and the unrestrained play of the passions un- 
avoidably interferes with that harmony, and leads to con- 
stant friction and violence, therefore is morality an es- 
sential and fundamental obligation in every social system 
which is intended to promote the material wellbeing and 
happiness of mankind. But the reader must clearly under- 
stand that the civilising influence thus brought into play 
by each Racial movement would, in the circumstances, be 
very limited. In another chapter of this work, we estab- 


REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST 


333 


lished the fact that the Racial process necessarily exercised 
an overwhelming influence on the individuals it affected, 
which, so long as it had nothing stronger than the animal 
egotism of the individual to contend with, was quite suf- 
ficient to convert the latter into a civilised being. In any 
society, therefore, which had not become infected with the 
great passions, and which had not become honeycombed 
with institutions hostile to the spirit of civilisation, the 
Racial process was sufficient in itself to determine civilisa- 
tion. But matters were very different when the Archaic 
period of human development came to an end. The great 
passions had then become integral parts of human nature, 
so integral, indeed, that even when the religious conscious- 
ness did not produce them they were capable of being ex- 
cited by the mere activity of his physical organisation. Hu- 
man society had become honeycombed with institutions that 
were absolutely incompatible with the modern ideal of 
civilisation, and the ethical basis of these institutions had 
been so deeply stamped on the individual that it had become 
the very foundation of his conscience, and the determinant 
of all his actions and of all his feelings. In other words, 
the Racial influence had now not to contend only with the 
animal egotism of the individual, but with passions and with 
ethical conceptions that had been brought into being by a 
process which was as much more powerful than itself as its 
own influence was more powerful than that of the animal 
egotism of the individual; and these passions and ethical 
conceptions were reinforced, moreover, by a pagan religious 
consciousness which, although decaying, was still to remain 
for many ages the most powerful determinant of human 
conduct. It is obvious that, in these circumstances the 
Racial instinct alone could effect little improvement in the 
social and moral conditions of humanity. The mere fact 


334 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

that it had to contend with such enormous difficulties would 
be quite sufficient to prevent it from even attempting to 
alter radically the existing conditions of things. For it 
must be borne in mind that the supreme object of the Racial 
instinct is, after all, simply to secure the cohesion, the safety, 
and the permanence of the community in which it operates. 
It was much easier to secure these objects by building up 
a social organisation which took these passions and these 
ethical conceptions for granted, and only modified and re- 
strained them to the extent that the common good de- 
manded; than to attempt to secure them by demanding 
from humanity the complete extinction of its old nature 
and the birth of a new one. And since it was easier for it 
to attain its supreme object by thus compromising with the 
tendencies and the institutions of humanity it naturally did 
so, because it was mainly concerned with the cohesion, the 
safety, and the permanence of the community. To attempt 
to operate in any other way would be to ensure a period 
of hopeless strife within the community, which could have 
no other result than to completely wreck its cohesion, its 
safety, and its permanence. 

Moreover, the reader must clearly understand that the 
civilising influence brought into play by each Racial move- 
ment could only extend as far as the Racial influence itself. 
It therefore only attenuated the passions of the individual 
within the civilisation of his own particular community. It 
could have absolutely no influence on his attitude towards 
people of an alien race, or even towards members of his own 
race who lived in a different state. What it would do 
would be to create within each state a social organisation 
based on such an equitable interpretation of the law that 
it would cause the relations of its various classes to be 
governed by just that amount of justice, peace, and morality 


REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST 


335 


which was necessary to secure the cooperation of all in the 
maintenance and the preservation of the state. The in- 
dividual would necessarily consent to this organisation, and 
behave in sympathy with it as long as the growing period 
of his Racial movement lasted ; but on the other side of his 
nature he was subject to the claims of a decaying religious 
consciousness which, because it was decaying, was capable 
only of inflaming his passions. He would have to find a 
vent for them somewhere, and thus war would become to 
him a necessary condition of his existence, without which 
he could not for long live in comfort. For in war as it was 
practised in ancient times, all the relations and obligations 
of civilised existence were completely suspended, and un- 
limited scope was afforded to the play of the passions. Thus 
every Racial movement, after the pagan religious conscious- 
ness had begun to decay, would bring about a state of things 
where the passions of humanity, suppressed in the internal 
relations of each state, and yet constantly kept alive by 
the worship of the gods, necessarily found a vent for them- 
selves in a constant state of external warfare. But the pas- 
sions would thus vent themselves only so long as the energy 
of each Racial movement was sufficient to maintain those 
civilised instincts and that social organisation on which was 
based the internal civilisation of each state. As soon as the 
energy of each Racial movement began to ebb away, and 
the resistance to the passions within the civilisation di- 
minished, then these passions, finding easier vent for them- 
selves within the peaceful relations of the internal civilisa- 
tion, would necessarily recoil on the civilisation, and 'com- 
pletely destroy the harmony of those relations. In each 
Racial movement, therefore, each phase of decay would 
produce not merely the cessation of development towards 
civilisation, but would actually result in a complete oblitera- 


336 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

tion of all the instincts as well as of all the material safe- 
guards of civilisation which the earlier period had brought 
into being, and the final barbarism and savagery of social 
existence would be as profound as that from which each 
Racial movement started. This state of things is strikingly 
exemplified in the history of the Racial movements that 
immediately follow the critical point in the historical per- 
spective of human evolution. In the Greek, in the Roman, 
and in the Mohammedan Racial movements we have in each 
case in the earlier period an exquisite internal civilisation 
accompanied by an incessant state of external warfare, and 
a later period in which the internal civilisation entirely dis- 
appeared under the assaults made on it by the turbulent 
egotism and the great passions of humanity ; and at the end 
of each movement, the people affected in each case were not 
better off in everything that relates to material civilisation 
and culture than they were when the movement first started. 
Thus it is clear that the civilising influence of the Racial 
Movements in the Modern phase of human development 
could not by itself permanently rescue humanity from 
the corruption and the disintegrating influences of which it 
had become the prey at this point in the world-drama of 
human evolution; far less support a continuous progression 
towards a level of material civilisation and culture such as 
appears to be well within the possibilities of future achieve- 
ment at the present day. In the absence of some power 
emanating from the religious consciousness itself, and in- 
vested with as universal and absolute a prerogative over 
human action as that of the pagan gods, but differing from 
theirs in being directly and overwhelmingly antagonistic to 
the play of the passions, the disruptive influences must have 
inevitably continued to gain the upper hand, and human 
beings, separating further and further away from each other, 


REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST 337 

must have drifted more and more into the state of nomadic 
savagery; finally to sink, when the last Racial movement 
of the whole Generic process had come to an end, into the 
solitary and brutish condition which is characteristic of 
many species in the animal world. For the grace and re- 
finement of human beings is entirely due to the qualities in 
them that make for civilisation, and their intelligence, de- 
pendent as it is for its maintenance as well as for its de- 
velopment on human fellowship, would soon shrink and 
atrophy in a state of social deprivation. 

Moreover, in order that the necessary revelation should 
prove efficacious, it was, in addition, necessary that it should 
effect itself in a way capable of salving humanity from the 
consciousness of its own sinfulness. In the new era of de- 
velopment that was now beginning, a mental change was 
about to take place in the individual, which was going to 
fill him with new ideals and aspirations. These new ideals 
and aspirations were going to have the effect of making him 
realise that his whole nature was a seething mass of moral 
corruption, in which nothing that was not sinful could live. 
This nature was born with him, and throughout his whole 
life he felt it overwhelmingly preponderant. The more the 
civilising influence of each Racial movement operated on 
him, the more would he feel that he was absolutely incapa- 
ble of fulfilling its requirements, and the more would he be- 
come conscious of the weight of the burden that stifled the 
new life that was manifesting itself in him. In other 
words, the spiritual redemption of humanity was necessary 
before the Racial movements, or even the new revelation 
of the religious consciousness, could have any effect in sav- 
ing humanity from the abyss. 

But the reader who has followed me so far will see that, 
from our point of view, the only chance of such a cataclysm 


338 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

happening would lie in a possible failure of the energy of 
the Generic Organism. Provided the energy of the Generic 
Organism did not fail, and it was able to fulfil its develop- 
ment, then such a cataclysm could not possibly happen, sim- 
ply because the unity of the Generic Organism makes for 
unity among all the peoples which it permeates just as much 
as the unity of the Racial organism makes for unity among 
the peoples of any particular race. There would therefore 
be fundamentally immanent in the Generic process from its 
very commencement a tendency to unify the great growth of 
humanity it affected in the bonds of one common civilisation 
which, like that produced by each Racial movement, would 
be based on a loyal recognition of the principle of reciprocity 
in social relations, and capable of assuring the material in- 
terests and happiness of the individual. This unifying 
force would be inhibited in the early stages of the develop- 
ment, by the fact that the latter had to be propagated 
through a series of Racial movements, and that the neces- 
sities of this mode of propagation made the growth of the 
great passions inevitable; but it would be bound to declare 
itself before the energy of the Generic process began to ebb 
away, and establish in human consciousness a determinant 
sufficiently powerful and sufficiently universal to effect its 
purpose. This necessary determinant was none other than 
the revelation to humanity of the true Creator of the Uni- 
verse; a God who, because He was the true Creator, was 
necessarily a God of Love. The impulse that sprang from 
this revelation would necessarily affect the whole of the re- 
ligious consciousness of the individual, not only in his rela- 
tions with men and women of his own race and nationality, 
but also his relations with those who were alien to him; 
and it would continue to operate after the energy of each 
Racial process had ebbed away, and its civilising influence 


339 


REVELATION OF GOD* IN CHRIST 

had come to an end. Thus it is evident that in submitting 
itself to His divine prerogative, the religious consciousness 
of man would surrender itself to a determinant which was 
fully capable of effecting the desired attenuation of the great 
passions. For the desire of an individual not to hurt his 
fellow creatures necessarily curbs the passions in him, and 
when this desire sways his whole being with the overwhelm- 
ing force of a divine impulsion, then the passions must 
necessarily dissolve into such shadows of their elemental 
selves that, though they can heighten the pleasures of social 
intercourse, they cannot hurt it. It was this revelation, 
therefore, that was absolutely necessary in the course of the 
cosmic process if the Generic Organism had to fulfil its de- 
velopment, and to succeed in expressing its unity in a corre- 
spondingly unified condition of the whole growth of hu- 
manity which it brought into being. It was this necessary 
revelation of God that embodied itself in the figure of 
Jehovah. The reader must clearly understand that if God 
does not really exist as a supreme Being or creative power 
having an existence entirely separate and distinct from that 
of any particular process in Nature, then this revelation 
could not have taken place. The utmost that the new mind- 
organ could have revealed would have been a single su- 
preme God who possessed all the qualities, and the disposi- 
tion, and the essential nature of the pagan gods, such as 
El-Shaddai, the early god of the Hebrews, undoubtedly was. 
For the subjective phase of consciousness can only reveal 
that which actually exists, and the fact signalised in 
consciousness by Jehovah was as much a reality as 
any of the other facts registered in consciousness by the 
development of the new mind-organ. The very fact that 
it has been so difficult, if not impossible, for humanity to 
grasp the truth signalised in the conception of Jehovah that 


34 o THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

the true Creator of the Universe is a loving God, who does 
not need the worship and sacrifice of human beings, shows 
how foreign the conception is to the human mind. Scarcely 
had the period of Racial inspiration which produced the 
great intuition come to an end than the Jews themselves be- 
came incapable of retaining a distinct impression of its sub- 
stance. The same astonishing incapacity manifests itself 
clearly in the early Christians themselves. They were quite 
ready to die in vindication of their belief that Christ was 
the Son of God; but they failed utterly to keep in mind 
which or what God it was that Christ was the son of — 
hence the rapid drift of Christianity into Paganism. And 
this proves beyond all doubt that the fact signalised in con- 
sciousness by Jehovah was not something taking place in 
the human brain itself; it was a great objective reality ex- 
isting outside the human brain, which the latter could only 
feel subjectively at one particular point of its develop- 
ment. 

The recognition of the true nature of the original vision 
of Jehovah lights up with a brilliant significance the revela- 
tion of God which manifested itself in Christ some 500 years 
after the end of the period of Racial inspiration which had 
brought the great intuition into the world. The point of 
view that it opens out compels one to acknowledge that 
Christ was, in very fact, the expression in flesh and blood 
of that original idea which, for the Jews, was the beginning 
of all things. In this sense, and He clearly defined the ex- 
pression in this sense, He proclaimed Himself to be the Son 
of God, the man in whom all men could see the reflection 
of the Heavenly Father. In thus professing to represent 
in Himself the Heavenly Father, Christ gives us a vivid 
representation of God which is more perfect in its rendering 


REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST 341 

of the original vision of Jehovah than that contained in the 
Old Testament. 

The God whom He reveals to us has three essential char- 
acteristics. One is, that He is full of love for the human 
beings whom He has created. This love is not dependent 
in any way on the worship or the sacrifice that human beings 
render to Him; He is not benevolent towards them in re- 
turn for their worship and sacrifice; His love springs spon- 
taneously from the fact that He is the true Creator and the 
Heavenly Father. His love is not affected even by the fact 
that a man is a sinner, a breaker of the sacred law, or 
through some infirmity or disease an outcast from respecta- 
ble society. The God whom Christ reveals to us accepts, 
as the true Creator, the responsibility for all the blemishes 
that human beings are liable to; whatever is, has happened 
through His creative power, for His own purpose, and He 
will not allow any man to be considered a pariah on ac- 
count of his imperfections, nor is he to be damned to all 
eternity for any sin. Greater love and tenderness, indeed, 
is shown towards those who suffer from imperfections and 
blemishes than to those who are perfect; for the former 
have suffered much more through the cosmic process for 
which the Creator is responsible than the latter. And above 
all, no consideration for his own purity, for his own safety, 
or for his own spiritual development, must deter a man 
from mingling with the world, and with everything that 
is most debased and corrupt in the world. Christ Himself 
associates with publicans, with harlots, and with sinners of 
all kinds; He touches the leper and thereby becomes Him- 
self an outcast; and in many different ways He shows His 
absolute disregard of St. Paul’s aphorism that evil com- 
munications corrupt good manners. The love that Christ 
reveals in Himself is therefore in every particular the at- 


342 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

titude of the true Creator of the material world. There is 
nothing like it in any other religion or in any other religious 
teaching. 

The second essential characteristic of the God whom 
Christ reveals to us is, that He does not need the worship 
and the sacrifice of human beings. This second character- 
istic is as clearly emphasised in Christ as the first, but the 
conception is so incompatible with the development of Chris- 
tian doctrine in the early centuries of our era that its ex- 
pression has suffered much more than that of the first, and 
has, indeed, been so blurred in the Gospels that it is liable 
to be missed altogether, even by a serious student of the 
Bible, if he happens to be ignorant of comparative religion, 
and therefore unaware of the main difference between Je- 
hovah and the pagan gods. The indications, however, are 
quite clear. For example, He repeatedly breaks the Sab- 
bath, on one occasion in order to perform a humane act, on 
another simply to allow His disciples to satisfy their hunger; 
and the significance of this breaking of the Sabbath cannot 
be exaggerated. The observance of the Sabbath was the 
very corner stone of the whole system of ritual and sacrifice 
in which the worship of God expressed itself in later Juda- 
ism. To do anything that was not in the nature of an act 
of worship on the Sabbath, even to perform the most neces- 
sary, meritorious, or noble action, was a deadly sin from the 
point of view of this later Judaism. If the alternative 
presented itself to a man of enduring the most dreadful 
calamity or of breaking the Sabbath, he was compelled by 
the law to endure the calamity, whatever it might be, in 
preference to breaking the Sabbath. To such a point of 
intensity did this philosophy reach that in their recent his- 
tory a heroic band of Jews, who had hitherto successfully 
resisted every assault, had actually allowed themselves to 


REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST 343 

be butchered in cold blood and their sacred temple to be de- 
stroyed rather than break the Sabbath by defending them- 
selves on that holy day. Thus in the observance of the Sab- 
bath was centred and emphasised the whole spirit of that 
law of sacrifice of the human being to the worship of the 
gods, which was the distinctive feature of every pagan re- 
ligion, and which had also become predominant in later 
Judaism. The breaking of the Sabbath by Christ is there- 
fore an act of the very greatest significance. It can mean 
nothing less than that in the view of Christ the whole of 
that law was condemned, and that He considered it as some- 
thing of the nature of an insult to God. In the same way 
He speaks disparagingly of the Temple and its sacrifices. 
He tells His disciples that if they must worship, they should 
do so in private and not in public, and that if they must 
pray they should do so shortly; and in one most valuable 
passage He emphatically affirms it is not the one who wor- 
ships, but the one who emulates in his daily life the attitude 
of the Creator, who is worthy of commendation. And He 
was crucified for His attitude in this respect. This fact 
proves that this part of Christ’s teaching was very strongly 
emphasised by Him; much more strongly than appears from 
the casual reading of the Gospels. The new law that Christ 
enforces and identifies with His revelation of God is indi- 
cated in clear and unmistakable terms: “Thou shalt love 
thy God with all thy heart, and thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bour as well as thyself.” To love God, not necessarily to 
worship God as the Jews worshipped Him, or as the pagans 
worshipped their gods; and certainly not to worship Him 
in any way that might be productive of the slightest injury 
to any human interest. 

And last, but not least, the God Whom He reveals to us 
is the Redeemer of humanity. This conception of God as 


344 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

the Redeemer was necessarily an integral part of the original 
vision of Jehovah; for as in this vision, God is the sole 
Creator of the Universe, He is necessarily responsible for the 
sin which He has sanctioned in His scheme of Creation. 
The recognition of this would necessarily salve the indi- 
vidual from the consciousness of his own sinfulness ; it would 
lift the load of responsibility from off his shoulders, and 
leave him free to follow out, with hope and energy, the new 
path that had been marked out for him. The Jews had 
never clearly understood this element in the original vision 
of Jehovah, because at the point of the great process at 
which they stood the mental change, which rendered spirit- 
ual redemption necessary, had not occurred. They were 
absolutely unaware of that burden of original sin which 
later on tortured the minds of the Greeks and Romans, sim- 
ply because the mental change which effected itself in the 
Greeks and Romans had not effected itself in them. They 
fully understood that Jehovah was the Redeemer of His 
people, but the act of redemption which they expected was 
an external act, and not an internal one. They believed 
that they had been created perfect, and that their fall into 
sinfulness had been the fault of an external act on their 
part, which could be compensated for by other external acts. 
Hence their conception of salvation through the strict ob- 
servance of a law which related to external acts. It was 
Christ, and Christ alone, Who revealed the true meaning 
of the promise of redemption contained in the original vision 
of Jehovah. Revealing in Himself the Heavenly Father, 
He makes God Himself responsible for the sinfulness 
of humanity, and goes to His death in order that every- 
one who sees in Him the Heavenly Father shall be 
relieved of responsibility in this respect, and shall feel 
himself capable, with God’s help, of leading the new life 


REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST 345 

necessary for the due fulfilment of the Generic process. 

Now this method of representing the promise of redemp- 
tion in the original vision of Jehovah may have been faintly 
adumbrated in some of the prophetic utterances where the 
inspiration reaches its highest point of intensity. It is not 
at all incredible or unlikely that these passages have the 
meaning which has been generally attributed to them; for, 
after all, it would only require a sufficient intuition of what 
was actually happening in the history of mankind to suggest 
the true form in which the promise of redemption was to be 
fulfilled: and the Jewish Racial movement stood just at 
that point of the Generic process where the meaning of both 
the past and the future might possibly be grasped by a 
genius of exceptional intuitive power. But it is absolutely 
certain that it was altogether foreign to the ideas of the 
Jews in general, and especially to the whole spirit of the 
later Judaism in the midst of which Christ lived. Not only 
were the Scribes and Pharisees who hounded Christ to His 
death wholly unconscious of the fact that they were thereby 
fulfilling and giving effect to His claims, but His own dis- 
ciples were so shocked and dumbfounded at the degrada- 
tion that was happening to the man who had professed to 
reveal to them the Heavenly Father that for a time they 
forsook Him and denied their allegiance. And even after- 
wards, when the belief in His resurrection drew them to- 
gether again, and filled them with fresh hope, they could 
not understand that what had so shocked them was, in truth, 
the act of redemption; and they went on waiting patiently 
in the full belief that Christ would appear again, this time 
with power, to perform the act of external redemption which 
they were expecting. There was only one Jew of those 
times who grasped the full significance of what had hap- 
pened to Christ; that Jew was Paul; and he understood be- 


346 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

cause he knew what was going on amongst the Greeks and 
the Romans, and what they were trying to express in their 
religions and philosophies. As a matter of fact, at that 
time the mental change that was to be the first step in the 
regeneration of humanity had already effected itself amongst 
the Greeks and the Romans; and they, although completely 
ignorant of the Jehovistic revelation, were trying to embody, 
in terms of their religious consciousness, their intuitive sense 
of the real thing that was happening within them. Now the 
astonishing fact is, that although Christ was absolutely 
ignorant of all that was happening amongst the Greeks 
and Romans, and although the world in which He lived 
was hermetically sealed against the intrusion of any such 
alien influences and knowledge ; although He was the simple, 
ignorant son of a carpenter, brought up throughout His 
whole life in the rigid ritual of Judaism; yet in His life 
and death He gave a representation of the expected act of 
redemption which was entirely foreign to the Jewish con- 
ception, and was so identical, in all its main features, with 
that which the Greeks and Romans were trying to embody 
in their various Mysteries, that they could be expressed in 
exactly the same terms. In other words, the life and death 
of Christ completely and perfectly symbolised the first step 
of the process of regeneration that was about to effect itself 
in humanity. And the moment that Paul grasped the sig- 
nificance of this fact, he necessarily became convinced that 
the man whose followers he was persecuting was in reality 
what He claimed to be, namely, the Messiah in whom the 
redemption of humanity, through God’s providence, should 
be made manifest. For in thus fulfilling in Himself the act 
of redemption in the Gentile meaning of the term, Christ 
fulfilled at the same the expected function of the Jewish 
Messiah. It was probably the sudden realisation of this su- 


REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST 347 

preme fact, which it was so difficult for the disciples to 
grasp at that moment, that gave rise in Paul’s mind to the 
brilliant psychic illumination which revealed to him the 
figure of Christ as the Redeemer. In Paul’s view, Christ 
was primarily the Jewish Messiah, the Son of God who, by 
securing the remission of the sins of the whole of humanity 
was to save the children of Israel from their external diffi- 
culties. That this is so is clear from the fact that he always 
represented Christ as the promised Messiah of Judaism, and 
that it was to the Jews that he made his first appeal. There 
would have been no sense in making this appeal to the Jews 
if Paul had only represented Christ as the Redeemer that 
the Gentile world craved for. He, of all men, must have 
known that such an appeal could have no effect. What he 
tried to make them see was, not only that Christ was the 
Redeemer promised in the original vision of Jehovah, but 
that if they accepted Him as the Messiah, their acceptance 
would inevitably lead also to the long promised redemption 
of Israel from its external troubles. And Paul was right; 
for if the Jews had accepted Paul’s message, Jerusalem 
would not have been destroyed and, later on, when Chris- 
tianity triumphed over all its competitors, that city would 
have become the centre of Christendom instead of Rome, 
and the Jews themselves, as the originators and the 
guardians of the triumphant religion, would have attained 
to that position of world supremacy which they expected 
the Messiah to secure for them. It was only when he found 
his efforts were of no avail, that not only the Jews but even 
the disciples of Christ could not be made to see that which 
he saw so clearly, that he turned away from them and sought 
the fulfilment of his mission amongst the Gentiles alone. 

It is not difficult for us to see the origin of St. Paul’s 
point of view. He was born and bred in Tarsus of Cilicia, 


348 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

and this place was a great centre of Mithraic worship as 
well as of Greek philosophy. At this time Mithraism had 
not yet begun its victorious onslaught on the Roman Em- 
pire, but it was just preparing itself for the task; and Tarsus 
of Cilicia was one of the centres where this preparation was 
taking place. As a Jew and a Pharisee, Paul knew that the 
original vision of Jehovah was pregnant with a promise of 
redemption for the whole of humanity, which included 
within itself the specific salvation of the children of Israel 
from their external troubles. But his early surroundings 
had made him aware of the cry for salvation which had 
arisen from the Gentile world, and they must have also 
given him an inkling of the fact that whatever sect suc- 
ceeded in satisfying this cry would necessarily win for itself 
the hegemony of the Roman world; for the intellectual at- 
mosphere of Tarsus, where the Mithraic priests were so busy 
preparing themselves for the competition, must have been 
full of the suggestion. He had never known Christ in the 
flesh, and the conception he formed of Him was altogether 
derived from his own observation of Christ’s personal in- 
fluence on those disciples whom he, Paul, was engaged in 
persecuting. He saw that the belief in Christ rendered men 
capable of surrendering all the joys of life, and even of 
suffering torture and death. It drew them away, and made 
them entirely independent of this material world, and lifted 
them into a transcendant sphere of devotion wherein nothing 
had the slightest effect on them but the claims of their re- 
ligious consciousness. But these very men who were so 
willing to suffer for their belief could not explain why Christ 
had died. This fact was the weak point in their armoury, 
and we may imagine Paul continually taunting them with 
the question, and asking them to explain how they could 
reconcile the death of Christ with their belief that He was 


REVELATION OF GOD IN CHRIST 349 

the Messiah. But this question so often asked necessarily 
caused the different elements in Paul’s consciousness to con- 
verge to a single point; and the result was the conversion 
that is so admirably depicted in the IXth chapter of the 
Acts of the Apostles. 

But the point that I wish the reader particularly to grasp 
is, that it was only through thus bringing about this revela- 
tion that the cosmic process could properly fulfil itself. 
The revelation of God in Jehovah is an integral part of 
the whole Generic process. Without it, this Generic process 
could not fulfil itself. God has not revealed Himself to 
us in what we call a miraculous manner. He could not do 
so, for as He is the Creator of the material world and all 
its laws, He would be hiding Himself from us, and not 
revealing Himself to us, in the breaking of any of these 
laws. But as He governs the whole world through the 
operation of the natural laws which He has established, so 
He has revealed Himself to us in the natural course of 
events, because without that revelation the Generic process 
could not fulfil itself. And according to our postulate, 
the revelation of God to humanity is not in any sense a 
supernatural event, or an event that is opposed to the natural 
order of things, or an event that infringes in the slightest de- 
gree the laws of nature as they have been established by 
science. It is, on the contrary, the necessary result of a 
natural process which can be described in scientific terms, 
free from ambiguity; and which could never have fulfilled 
itself without that revelation. 


tf 



















BOOK III 


PERIOD OF SUBSIDENCE 



CHAPTER I 


THE GREEK AND ROMAN RACIAL MOVEMENTS 

We have now done with the Archaic period, and I pro- 
pose in the next two chapters to show very briefly and 
concisely that our theory holds the key to the whole of the 
subsequent progression of humanity. The theory postu- 
lates a progressive subsidence in the developmental energy of 
the Generic Organism; and it was this subsidence that de- 
termined the course of events. 

In the Greek and Roman Racial movements history gives 
us notice, with almost explosive violence, of the critical 
turn in human affairs. Not even the most casual observer 
could fail to understand that a new era had commenced in 
the evolution of humanity. In the first place, there was a 
palpable weakening of the power of the religious conscious- 
ness. In its highest form, this religious consciousness ex- 
pressed itself in the Mysteries, a secret and sacramental 
form of devotion which exercised very little influence on 
the general current of human activity during the growing 
periods of the Greek and Roman Racial movements, and 
only became widely prevalent and of considerable impor- 
tance when the energy of each one of these Racial move- 
ments was decaying. So lost in the other activities mani- 
fested by these Racial movements in their periods of growth 
is this highest expression of the religious consciousness of 
the Greeks and Romans that, in spite of our extensive 
knowledge of both these civilisations, very little attention 
has been paid to them, and their significance has never been 
properly estimated. The gods who were most widely wor- 

353 


354 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

shipped during the periods of Racial growth were simply 
animistic conceptions of the facts and processes of Nature; 
very inferior in the scale of divinity to the deities of the 
Persians, Brahmins, and Jews. They were not in any way 
the expression of the subjective change that was taking 
place in the Greeks and the Romans, nor did they dominate 
these two Races as the Oriental religions had dominated 
the Races of the Archaic period. In the second place, there 
was infused in every objective idea a new and brilliant 
spirit; and it is this characteristic which separates these two 
Races most clearly from the Oriental nations which pre- 
ceded them. In them the higher intelligence obtained its 
first glimpse of Nature, and this glimpse was full of the de- 
light and rapture which accompanies a fresh sensation. 
Every object not only gave them pleasure, but awoke in 
them an ideal sense due to the fact that it was perceived 
by a mind-element which was itself a unit of consciousness 
in which the spiritual imagination reigned supreme. It 
was this fact that gave to the Greeks that power of artistic 
appreciation and expression in which they have had no 
rivals. Their gods retained much of the wild and im- 
moral nature which they originally possessed, but they 
could offer but a feeble resistance to the nascent impulse 
which made for objective development and material civili- 
sation and culture. In every direction we see this impulse 
manifesting itself, and manifesting itself with a special suc- 
cess because it was nascent. Even the gods were subject 
to it, and became clothed afresh in attributes somewhat 
more compatible with their new surroundings. Following 
them came the Roman Racial movement, in which the ob- 
jective development of the intelligence attained a still 
further stage. The Romans no longer paused to survey 
with delight the world that was revealing itself to them. 


Diagram V.— Inclusion of Cell A in Circuit of Cell-group D. 



OO 


oo 


OO 


oo 



























GREEK AND ROMAN RACIAL MOVEMENTS 355 

They advanced unhesitatingly to possess it and to rule over 
it. Their higher intelligence made them the great admin- 
istrators they were. And amongst them the civilising in- 
fluence of the Racial movement was so triumphant that 
their gods, although derived from the same low origin as 
the Greek deities, were compelled to officiate as presiding 
geniuses of all the activities that make for the maintenance 
of the civilised state. Thus, rising sharply out of the world 
of Oriental barbarism, we see these two magnificent civili- 
sations appear in all their grandeur; exhibiting many 
features of excellence which we still, in spite of the two 
thousand years that have elapsed, can scarcely emulate. 

The meaning of this startling phenomenon is clear. The 
inspiration which had given rise to a progressive develop- 
ment of religion through the Archaic period was dead. 
The growth of the subjective intelligence which had given 
birth to these religions was at an end. The energy of the 
cosmic process was beginning to ebb away; and the intel- 
ligence which had hitherto been maintained in separation 
from the external world by the internal vigour of growth, 
had now to become objective, and surrender itself to the 
stimulus of the outside world if it were to maintain its 
vitality and escape atrophy. Freed from any intense re- 
ligious domination, it was able to do so; and the whole 
energy of these two Racial movements expended itself in 
the production of objective ideas, and in the development 
of material civilisation and culture. 

But this new development of objective ideation led to 
no extension of the grasp of humanity over the forces and 
materials of Nature. The Greeks and Romans simply re- 
vivified and reorganised all the knowledge of Nature that 
humanity had possessed before, and applied it with an 
energy and intelligence which excite our admiration. But 


356 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

they did not add one single fact to the sum total of human 
knowledge. There is nothing in their material ^equipment, 
or in their knowledge of Nature, that indicates that they 
discovered anything that was not known to the Early Dynas- 
tic Egyptians three thousand years before. It was, indeed, 
from that more ancient civilisation that they obtained all 
the bases of their material knowledge; they handled this 
knowledge in a very ingenious manner, but they did not 
add anything to it. And the moment they tried to rise to 
a higher level of generalisation in their grasp of ideas, they 
lost their grip over the material world altogether, and 
drifted into a chaotic mysticism which was far less truth- 
ful than its Oriental prototype. And our theory has to 
explain not only the obvious weakening of the religious 
consciousness and the brilliancy of objective ideation, but 
also that strange limitation of objective ideation which is 
characteristic of them. It has to explain, in other words, 
why there occurred none of that growth of scientific knowl- 
edge amongst the Greeks and the Romans which is such 
a characteristic feature of the present day. 

The situation will become quite clear if we refer to the 
Diagram IV made use of in Bk. II Chap. VIII. During 
the whole Archaic period, the ganglion A had been kept 
separate from the cell-group D by the developmental 
energy of the Generic Growth. The growth of the Ge- 
neric Organism reached its zenith in the Hebrew Racial 
movement. And soon as its developmental energy began 
to ebb away, the relations between A and cell-group D 
were naturally profoundly altered. A was no longer capa- 
ble of suppressing the psychical activity of cell-group D; 
and in the absence of this inhibitory influence, and because 
of the continued block in <2, the current of energy liber- 
ated by the stimulation of cell-group D, would tend to 


GREEK AND ROMAN RACIAL MOVEMENTS 35? 

pass directly from b and e to A. As a result of this, defi- 
nite channels of communication would be established be- 
tween these ganglia, and A would be gripped and drawn 
down into the circuit of the cell-group D. The phsyio- 
logical condition would then become that depicted in Dia- 
gram V, which represents the inclusion of A within a cell- 
group which was originally wholly Palseogynic. In con- 
sequence of the change A now became an objective mind- 
element. The sensuous stimulation which reached D 
passed through A and affected it in the same way as it 
did any other cell of the group. The only difference be- 
tween A and the other cells of the group was, that stim- 
ulation produced a much more powerful result in it than 
in the others, and thus its effect in consciousness was su- 
preme. It became the sole representative in consciousness 
of the whole group. The enormous energy thus imparted 
to objective ideation was the factor that determined the 
character of the two Racial movements. The whole 
energy of the Racial movement, in fact, expended itself in 
producing the result, and in establishing its effects in all 
its bearings on the national existence. The psychological 
situation was that signalised in Plato’s doctrine of ideas. 
Every objective idea had within it a divine element which 
was a spiritual replica of the material figure, but far sur- 
passed it in beauty, goodness, and power. Behind this 
array of divine elements, and taking no part in the mate- 
rial world, lay that deified unity which was the highest 
embodiment of the self-consciousness of the individual. 

This completely explains both the declension of the 
religious consciousness and the brilliant illumination of ob- 
jective ideas. We have still to account for the singular 
limitation of these objective ideas. In order to make this 
clear, I will first show how it was that the dropping of the 


358 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

cell A into the physiological circuit of cell-group C would 
eventually, although it did not do so at that period, enor- 
mously increase the intellectual capacity of the individual, 
and gradually enable him to develop that extensive grasp 
over the forces and materials of Nature which he possesses 
to-day. 

The intellectual capacity of the individual is obviously 
dependent on the number of presentations that his con- 
sciousness is capable of grasping and of handling at one 
and the same time ; for the larger the number of data which 
he is able to compare in arriving at his conclusions, the 
more correct will these conclusions necessarily be. And in 
order that these data should be capable of so re-acting on 
each other in all their bearings as to furnish the conclusion 
which is necessarily representative of their differential 
value, it is necessary that all these data should be present 
at one and the same time in consciousness. 

Now this power of attention is strictly limited; it varies 
with different people; but in every person it is a strictly 
limited quantity. The mind can only attend to a certain 
number of presentations at one and the same time. We 
may put it in this way: that only a certain number of 
ganglia can, at one and the same time, enter completely 
within the sphere of psychic illumination. 

The moment this is granted, the demonstration becomes 
easy. For, as I have already explained, ganglion A be- 
comes by reason of its virginal energy the sole represent- 
ative in consciousness of the whole cell-group D. Thus 
the whole content of the idea expressed by cell-group D re- 
vealed itself through the psychic illumination not of five 
cells as before, but of only one. It is therefore obvious 
that by the inclusion of A in the cell-group D, the in- 
tellectual capacity of the individual became five times as 


GREEK AND ROMAN RACIAL MOVEMENTS 359 

great as it was before the Neo-andric development. He 
became able to hold five times as many presentations at 
one and the same time in his consciousness, and it was 
through this enormously increased capacity for comparing 
the behaviour of objects in Nature that he finally discov- 
ered the properties of materials and the forces of Nature 
of which the Palseogynic mind-organ had been ignorant. 

But this larger field of comparison would involve the 
synthetic handling of a great number of Neo-andric ganglia. 
All these ganglia would have to be brought into relation 
with each other, and their differential values accurately ad- 
justed and registered before the larger field of comparison 
could yield the results of which it was capable. It was 
only by the progressive inclusion of cells higher up in the 
Neo-andric mass marked B in the diagram that this build- 
ing up of larger centres of ideation could be effected. 

Now it is just this synthetic organisation of cells higher 
up in the Neo-andric mass that did not take place in the 
Greek and Roman Racial movements. All that happened 
was the dropping of the cell A into the physiological circuit 
of cell-group D. It was because of this that the range of 
objective ideation was so limited, although brilliant, and 
did not progress to the discovery of new facts and new laws 
in Nature. This is certain, because of the very fact that 
there occurred no religious effervescence during the growth 
of either of these Racial movements. In this respect these 
Racial movements were unique in the history of humanity, 
for all other Racial movements have produced as part of 
their growth a strong religious effervescence. In neither of 
these two movements did the Racial inspiration affect any 
of the great geniuses that they produced in a religious sense. 
It vented itself in the production of poets, artists, philoso- 
phers, legislators, generals, and administrators, but it did 


360 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

not produce a single man capable of founding a Racial re- 
ligion, or capable of rehabilitating into some higher form 
their inherited religious ideas. It is, indeed, this complete 
absence of religious effervescence in both of these Racial 
movements that makes the new departure in human evolu- 
tion so clear to us. And it is obvious that if there had been 
any synthetic organisation of the higher cells of the Neo- 
andric mass, it would inevitably have produced thaf re- 
ligious effervescence which was absent. This synthetic or- 
ganisation involved intense activity in a layer of cells 
which was altogether Neo-andric and subjective; and it 
was inevitable that any intense activity in this layer of 
cells should produce, at the same time, a great effervescence 
and recrudescence in the religious consciousness. For these 
cells were, in their subjective state, essentially religious 
cells, capable initially of giving rise only to a religious con- 
sciousness. And when this synthetic organisation did take 
place in the two Racial movements that succeeded the Ro- 
man, it did, as we know, produce in each case a very strong 
religious effervescence. In both the Mohammedan and in 
the Mediaeval Catholic Racial movements which imme- 
diately succeeded the Roman, the effervescence of the re- 
ligious consciousness was, from the first, the dominant 
feature of the development; and it was necessarily so be- 
cause it was the higher cells of the Neo-andric mass B that 
the development was organising in relation to A. But dur- 
ing the Greek and Roman Racial movements, the only 
thing that happened was the dropping of the ganglion A 
into the clutches of the cell-group D. There took place no 
organisation of the higher Neo-andric cells, and the change 
therefore effected itself without any effervescence of the re- 
ligious consciousness. 

But it was only during the growing periods of the two 


GREEK AND ROMAN RACIAL MOVEMENTS 361 

Racial movements that the development which the Greeks 
and the Romans were undergoing made them independent 
of the oppressive force of the religious consciousness. As 
soon as each of these Racial movements had passed its 
zenith, the tendency towards material civilisation and 
culture got gradually weaker and weaker, and the religious 
consciousness regained its ancient predominance. But in 
neither Race was the religious inspiration sufficient to pro- 
duce by itself a subjective presentation of the particular 
phase of the cosmic process through which each was pass- 
ing. Even the Greeks, despite their pride and their pre- 
eminence in the philosophic handling of ideas, only suc- 
ceeded in embodying this presentation in their Mysteries 
by the use of alien cults, which they absorbed and adapted 
to their special purpose when the necessity arose. The Ro- 
mans, on the other hand, had been made to feel their weak- 
ness in religious philosophy at an early period in their his- 
tory. They had, at the very beginning, compelled their 
own gods to become very much more civilised than those of 
the Greeks, but in this process they had so emasculated them 
that these deities completely lost the power of inflaming the 
religious consciousness; and in moments of great emergency 
they felt the lack of something capable of stimulating into 
activity that tremendous reserve of universal will-power 
that lay in the religious consciousness. It was because of 
this that, from the time that their power was nearly shat- 
tered in their conflict with the Carthaginians, they began to 
import from the various countries of the East new gods; 
and they found in this worship of the Eastern gods that 
stimulus which the older Roman gods were incapable of 
supplying. This worship of Eastern gods continued over 
200 years before the Roman Racial movement reached its 
zenith; and during this time they had come to rely entirely 


362 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

on these Oriental cults for the proper expression of their 
religious consciousness. But in order that these cults 
should appeal to them, it was necessary that they should 
undergo such modification as enabled them to express in 
themselves the subjective change that was taking place in 
the Romans ; and the more each one of these cults was capa- 
ble of expressing this subjective change, the greater was the 
favour and the recognition that it won. 

I have already indicated the subjective change that was 
taking place in the individual during these Racial periods; 
but the reader must further bear in mind that since the 
paralysing effect of the religious development had come to 
an end, and the civilising influence of each Racial move- 
ment was in the ascendant, the moral influence exerted by 
the stimulation of A during the period of growth of each 
Racial movement was altogether different from what it 
had been during the Archaic phase. Just as it had been 
through A that the necessities of the Generic Organism 
had declared themselves, so now it was through A that the 
necessities of the Racial organism manifested themselves 
to the individual. Thus, in the new phase of the cosmic 
process, A had become the chief instrument and the ulti- 
mate determinant of the moral as well as of the social and 
intellectual regeneration of humanity. Expressed in terms 
of the religious consciousness, a figure that originally and 
essentially belonged to the category of the divine had come 
down from heaven, and had become an integral part of ma- 
terial humanity; and through this degradation of the di- 
vine in the material the salvation of the world was ef- 
fecting itself, or would effect itself in the future. The 
reader will easily recognise in this conception the central 
theme of all the great religions that struggled for the mas- 
tery of the Roman world when the latter was decaying and 


GREEK AND ROMAN RACIAL MOVEMENTS 363 

despairing of civilisation. What I want him to bear in 
mind especially is the fact that this conception was trying 
to find expression in many of these religions long before the 
advent of Christianity. It is admirably portrayed in the 
central myth of the Gnostic religions. In this a great god- 
dess is represented as coming down from the regions of 
light and trying to ensnare the princes of darkness that 
govern the earth, by means of her sexual charms. Instead 
of her getting the better of them, she falls into their 
clutches, and is dragged down into captivity in which she 
suffers for a long time the vilest form of degradation; and 
it is through the sexual degradation of this transcendent 
embodiment of divine light and power that human salva- 
tion effects itself.* The same conception was the main 
theme of all the Greek Mysteries, both Eleusinian and 
Dionysiac; it was the very substance of the Roman Mys- 
teries associated in later times with the cults of Isis, Cybele, 
Attis, and many other alien deities. And it attained a 
less outrageous expression in the Mysteries of Mithra, be- 
fore it was finally most perfectly embodied in the Christo- 
centric religion of St. Paul. 

The Greek and Roman Mysteries may be grouped into 
two categories, which reveal the two consecutive stages of 
the one process that was taking place. The first category 
is typified by the Eleusinian Mysteries, and the second by 
the Dionysiac. It is, of course, impossible to study these 
Mysteries with any profit unless we are capable of placing 
ourselves mentally in the exact position of the Greeks and 
Romans who initiated them. Like all other expressions 
of the religious consciousness in past ages, they are purely 
subjective, and we cannot understand them unless we, first 
of all, know what it was that these people were trying to 
* Encyclopsed Britann. nth Edition, Art. Gnosticism. 


364 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

express in them. The reader will see that in the light 
of the psychological situation which we have postulated, 
the significance of these Mysteries becomes exceedingly 
clear, and confirms in a most brilliant manner the truth 
of our theory. 

If we turn to our Diagram we see that what had taken 
place was the pulling down of cell A into the circuit of 
Palseogynic cell-group D. A had been in past ages the pas- 
sion element of the Neo-andric mass. Through this event 
the regeneration of humanity and of the material world 
had taken place; whilst the upper layers of the Neo-andric 
mass had become correspondingly impoverished and in- 
capable of maintaining their ancient supremacy. There 
was therefore confusion and despair in the upper regions 
as the result of the fall of A into the clutches of cell-group 
D. But as the result of this exclusion of the passion ele- 
ment from the Neo-andric mass, the religious conscious- 
ness necessarily became purified and quite free from the 
element of passion. The idea of the deity which had been 
left behind in heaven was, therefore, that of a pure and 
benevolent being, to whom sin and passion of all kind was 
abhorrent; who could only be properly approached by a 
very pure form of worship, utterly free from sexual im- 
morality, and from the shedding of blood. It was man 
and Nature which had become vile and sinful. Heaven 
was now an abode of transcendent purity; and in order to 
worship into full consciousness of eternity, men had to sub- 
mit themselves to a rigid process of symbolic purification. 

This was the first stage of the psychological situation, 
that would necessarily be predominant in consciousness 
during the period of growth of each Racial movement, and 
would therefore express itself in the earlier Mysteries 
which, in the case of the Greeks, were the Eleusinian. 


GREEK AND ROMAN RACIAL MOVEMENTS 365 

The central theme of these Mysteries was the grief and 
sorrow of Demeter, the great goddess of heaven, at the 
loss of her daughter, Persephone. Now what was the 
character of Persephone 4 ? She was a young goddess so 
beautiful and so admirably fashioned that she invariably 
inspired the wildest and the most lawless form of sexual 
passion in everyone who beheld her. So lawless was the 
passion that emanated from her, that she actually inspired 
her divine father with an unholy craving for her person. 
This Persephone, the very embodiment of everything that 
arouses passion, falls into the clutches of Pluto, the god 
of the underworld, who carries her away so effectually 
that Demeter, in spite of her divine power, has no idea 
whither she has been taken. She is lost, and Demeter 
spends her time roaming about, mourning the loss, dis- 
tracted with grief, and incapable in this condition of ful- 
filling the functions of her high sovereignty. Because of 
this incapacity, she allows the power which formerly she 
jealously guarded to fall from her hands, and thus the 
material world and humanity acquired the power to look 
after themselves, so that things grew on the earth in a 
natural manner, and men managed their affairs in a way 
most conducive to their own interests, and thus became 
civilised. This grief and distraction of Demeter, from 
which everything else follows, is, as I have said, the central 
theme of the Mysteries. The people taking part in them 
express in their own actions and in their own feelings the 
grief of the great Mother, and rush about in the dark with 
torches for the lost one whom no one knows where to find. 
This representation of the divine mystery in the individual 
arouses him or her to a tremendous pitch of religious en- 
thusiasm, which is necessarily instinct with an overwhelm- 
ing sense of eternity. But the religious consciousness thus 


366 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

evoked is absolutely pure and free from any element or 
sense of passion. The passion element has been excluded 
from heaven, so that heaven has become a region in which 
only pure beings can reside; whilst the passion thus ex- 
cluded has become an integral part of human nature, so 
that men and women are naturally sinful. In order to fit 
themselves for the worship of Demeter, therefore, they 
have to undergo a severe course of moral catharsis; sym- 
bolised in particular by the frequent immersions in water 
which every devotee had to submit to before he was con- 
sidered fit to be initiated into the Mysteries. 

There could be nothing clearer and more evident indeed 
than the parallelism between the psychological situation in- 
dicated in my diagram and the whole of the dramatic 
movement which was the object of worship in these Mys- 
teries. The people in whom this divine presentation re- 
vealed itself were necessarily highly subjective; it was not 
in philosophers like Aristotle, or in metaphysicians like 
Plato, that the process would thus reveal itself; but only 
in those in whom the subjective condition could re-estab- 
lish itself most perfectly. They knew nothing of what 
was happening within themselves; they had no knowledge 
of the cosmic process demonstrated in this work, nor had 
they any knowledge of the existence of cerebral ganglia; 
but they felt the great thing that was happening in them 
in all its dimensions, and if they had known all about 
the cosmic process, and had had all the knowledge of cere- 
bral physiology which we possess at the present day, they 
could not have expressed the truth more accurately and 
more perfectly than they did express it in the Eleusinian 
Mysteries. And as we have just mentioned Plato and 
Aristotle, let me point out that this demonstration com- 
pletely explains the conception of the Deity entertained 


GREEK AND ROMAN RACIAL MOVEMENTS 367 

by each one of these philosophers. As the passion element 
had been excluded from the Neo-andric mass, and had 
become human, both Plato and Aristotle believed in a God 
who was absolutely good. In their conception of the 
Deity there was nothing of the passion or the malevolence 
which is characteristic of the gods of Oriental Paganism. 
To them evil could not spring from any divine impulse; 
it was an integral part of human nature and of the material 
world, and it was in human nature and in the material 
world that it had originated. And they differed only in 
this : that whilst Aristotle believed that God was the Crea- 
tor of the material world, and that therefore it was His 
intention that human nature and the material world should 
be reformed and made good by the exercise of the divine 
element in man expressing itself in terms of knowledge 
and of virtue, Plato, on the other hand, believed that the 
contact of the divine with the material was purely acci- 
dental, caused, as he expressed it, by an accident to the 
wings on which he supposed men’s souls soared into the 
empyrean; and he thought that all the energies of human 
existence should be directed to repairing these wings, and 
not to the hopeless effort of converting the material world 
into a fit abode for the human soul. 

Now let us deal with the second stage of the psycholog- 
ical situation. I said that it was only during the periods 
of growth that the two Racial movements were relatively 
free from any religious domination. When these periods 
of growth were at an end, there was a relapse in each case 
into the subjectivity of former times. The energy that 
had inspired the objective form of mentation, and chained 
the attention of the individual to the outside world, was 
diminished; and A was now drawn back into the sphere 
of influence of the Neo-andric mass. In other words, the 


368 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

passion element which had effected the regeneration of 
humanity, and the rejuvenation of the material world, re- 
turned to heaven. This return of the passion element was 
the chief factor in the psychological situation, and domi- 
nated its expression in the religious consciousness. Thus, 
whilst the religious consciousness became stronger in the 
individual, it compelled him to worship the deity in quite 
a different manner from that which had been used in the 
Eleusinian Mysteries. The worship was now essentially 
the worship of the passion element, and it was through 
this worship that the individual had to pass in order to 
attain to the blessings of everlasting life. This worship 
was necessarily clothed in the same terms as the old pas- 
sion worship of the Babylonians, and it expressed itself in 
promiscuous sexual immorality, and in the eating of the 
flesh and the drinking of the blood of living beings sacri- 
ficed to the passion gods. But it differed from the old 
Babylonian worship in this way; that, in the latter, the 
dominant feeling prevailing in the worship was one of 
gloom and hatred — for the gods worshipped were full of 
hatred to humanity; but in the worship of the Greeks and 
Romans the dominant feeling in the individual in this 
worship was one of joy and mirth, because the gods who 
were worshipped had rejuvenated the earth and regenerated 
humanity. 

The reader who has followed me so far will at once 
see that it was this second stage in the psychological situa- 
tion that was expressed in the Dionysiac Mysteries. The 
drinking of wine, or of some other alcoholic liquor in ex- 
cess, was an essential part of this worship; because alcohol 
has the specific property of causing or encouraging that act 
of mental dissociation which enables the subjective element 
to free itself, and to triumph over the objective. It was 


GREEK AND ROMAN RACIAL MOVEMENTS 369 

for this reason that alcohol had been specifically identified 
with the deity in Archaic times, and worshipped as in itself 
divine. And the need for it was much greater in the 
Greco-Roman period than it had been in the time of the 
Brahmins: for the Greeks and Romans had become so 
highly objective, and so highly civilised, that the process 
of dissociation, involving as it did the need to return to 
modes of behaviour which were absolutely incompatible 
with their civilised instincts, was of course a very much 
more difficult one. Therefore, in the Dionysiac Mysteries, 
the wine god necessarily played a very important part, and 
the whole worship identified itself with the cult of Bacchus. 

The great gulf which separates the worship of Demeter 
from that of Dionysius in Greece, is not so clearly appar- 
ent in the Roman Mysteries, simply because the latter had, 
from the very beginning, become infected with the 
Dionysiac influence imported from Greece. Thus in all 
the Roman Mysteries, these two stages are united into one 
single process, and included in one and the same form of 
Mystery. And they offer to us the extraordinary spectacle 
of a form of worship in which are included at one and the 
same time modes of behaviour which make for purification, 
and modes of behaviour which make for the degradation 
of humanity. In both the Mysteries of Isis and of Cybele, 
the first stage was the stage of purification ; and the sorrow 
and despair of the goddess trying to find the thing that 
she had lost is represented in exactly the same way, and 
by the same modes of behaviour, as in the Eleusinian Mys- 
teries. But the proceedings are concluded with the finding 
of the lost member of Osiris, and with the return to life 
of Attis; and in these stages the worshippers give them- 
selves up unreservedly to a joyous and mirthful reproduc- 
tion of the most abominable excesses of passion worship. 


370 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

As we should expect, there was a great tendency in the 
Roman Mysteries for the later stage to overshadow the 
first one; and in the orgiastic cults introduced from the East, 
this tendency easily fulfilled itself. 

These Oriental cults were imported from every country 
with which the Romans came into contact, and increased 
enormously; and as the tendency to worship these gods 
increased, so did the tendency arise for this worship to pro- 
duce in the Roman world exactly the same result as it had 
produced in the Oriental world. So long as the civilising 
influence of the Roman Racial movement was still in the 
ascendant, this worship did not produce any dangerous re- 
sults, but it was different when the Racial movement at- 
tained its zenith, and when its energy began to ebb away. 
Then the catastrophic effects of some of these cults became 
so marked that it was found necessary to suppress several 
of them. The cult of Cybele, although it was not sup- 
pressed, appears to have undergone a profound modifica- 
tion at this time. The sexual element was very much 
toned down, if not entirely eliminated, and the whole vir- 
tue of the worship concentrated itself in the eating of the 
flesh and drinking the blood of sacrificed animals. The 
initial purification which was effected in the Eleusinian 
Mysteries by means of water was now done in the blood 
of the sacrificed animal. Thus arose the Taurobolium, 
which became the most important part of the worship of 
Cybele. Her worshippers grouped themselves in a room 
where they were drenched in the blood of a bull or other 
victim, slaughtered in a chamber above them. This was 
the act of purification. They then ate the flesh and drank 
the blood of the sacrificed victims in the full belief that 
this act made them heirs to everlasting life. 

But the need of adequate embodiments of the religious 


GREEK AND ROMAN RACIAL MOVEMENTS 371 

consciousness was now even greater than it had been, be- 
cause of the decay of the civilising influence of the Racial 
movement. The Racial energy was ebbing away, and if 
the individual was to retain intact those virtues which had 
hitherto ennobled his ancestors, it could only be by bring- 
ing into action that tremendous reserve of will power which 
each man possessed in his religious consciousness. Re- 
ligion had now become for each man a personal necessity 
which required satisfaction as much as it had done in the 
case of the Oriental. But the embodiment of this re- 
ligion had to be in some measure compatible with the 
civilised instincts which were crying out for salvation in 
him. In these circumstances, the Roman world turned 
away from the lower orgiastic cults, and became power- 
fully drawn towards other Oriental religions which were 
free from any impulsion incompatible with the civilised 
state, and were, at the same time, capable of embodying 
in themselves the same conception of the salvation of 
humanity through the degradation of a divine being. 
Thus the whole empire fell at once an easy prey to 
Mithraism. The rapidity with which Mithraism over- 
spread the empire is simply astounding. Although it was 
scarcely known within the empire before the end of the 
first century, it was the dominant religion and universally 
practised in the most distant provinces, even in England, 
by the middle of the third century.* And our point of 
view makes it clear how it was that this happened. Mithra 
was essentially a warlike god, and his cult appealed very 
strongly to the Roman legions so long as they remained 
victorious in spite of increasing difficulties. Mithra- 
ism, moreover, deified the Emperors, and this necessarily 
commended it very strongly to Imperial favour. But 
*J. Cumont, “Mysteries of Mithra ” 


372 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

Mithraism triumphed chiefly because it was in itself so 
perfectly fitted to embody the conception that the Roman 
religious consciousness was trying to express, and to em- 
body it in a form which was perfectly compatible with the 
civilised feeling. The dualism of the Persian religion, and 
the sharp antithesis between the spiritual and the material 
as the base and cause of all things, was in complete har- 
mony with the Roman view of things. It was only nec- 
essary to emphasise the ethical side of the Persian spiritual 
ideal to give it the objective value that the Romans de- 
manded. Mithra was already the champion, the saviour, 
and the regenerator of humanity in the unceasing conflict 
between good and evil; he was, besides, in himself a god 
who had suffered degradation in falling from his original 
Ahura condition to the state of a Daeva worshipped in 
the form of images and by the sacrifice of bulls. But the 
very fact that Mithra had himself killed a bull, and was 
worshipped by the killing of bulls, indicated to his wor- 
shippers the line they should take in order that their cult 
should supersede that of the Great Mother of the gods, 
which was the one most prevalent in the Roman Empire 
at that time. There is no doubt that the worship of 
Mithra was at first very closely associated with that of 
Cybele, and it grew on ruins of the latter by absorbing 
in itself everything in it that had appealed to the religious 
consciousness of the Romans. It was the Taurobolium, and 
everything that it indicated and symbolised, which Mithra- 
ism borrowed from the worship of Cybele. The bull whose 
death ensured the purification of human beings, the rejuven- 
ation of the earth, and the joys of the everlasting life, was 
the bull that Mithra had killed. Mithra, indeed, had sinned 
in killing the bull, but he had been made to sin in this way 
by the supreme deity, whose messenger he was, in order 


GREEK AND ROMAN RACIAL MOVEMENTS 373 

that the material world and man should be saved. Mithra 
digs his knife into the side of the bull, and from this fatal 
wound there gush out three streams of blood; one rejuve- 
nates the earth, the second purifies the individual, and 
the third assures him of everlasting life. At first this was 
indicated in Mithraism in the gross and horrible manner 
in which it was expressed in the worship of Cybele, but the 
expression in Mithraism was gradually refined and rendered 
less offensive to the civilised instincts of the Romans. In- 
stead of gorging himself with the flesh and blood of living 
victims, the Mithraic worshipper finally got to symbolise 
these elements in water mixed with wine and in bread; 
and the sacramental use of these things in a ceremonial and 
mystical manner became the central function of the Mys- 
teries of Mithra, and assured to the communicant purifica- 
tion from his sins and the certainty of everlasting life. 
All this was so much in harmony with the spirit of the 
ancient Persian religion that it expressed itself easily and 
without a flaw in Mithraism; and that religion specially 
condemned those sexual practices which made all the 
orgiastic cults repugnant to the civilised sense of the Ro- 
mans. So the triumph of Mithraism was rapid and 
supreme. But it had finally to succumb to Christianity, 
because the latter was enshrined in a living personality, 
whose life and death symbolised the act of redemption even 
more perfectly than the degradation of Mithra was capable 
of doing. The tendency to view the life and death of 
Christ in this light had already begun with St. Paul, and as 
soon as the Christology of the Early Church had completely 
formulated and expressed itself in the terms that he cham- 
pioned, the fact that Christ was a living personality whose 
real existence could in those times be easily proved, deter- 
mined the issue. 


374 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

The reader cannot fail to see that the demonstration of 
the significance of the Greek and Roman religions contained 
in this chapter floods the whole subject of Christ’s mission, 
and its presentment by Paul, with a new light. Hitherto 
the world has had no standard beyond that of faith where- 
with to gauge the truth of the conception presented to us 
in the New Testament, and that standard, in this age of 
intellectual and objective mental development, is neces- 
sarily one that becomes less and less convincing. But from 
our point of view — and provided that point of view is cor- 
rect — it is clear that we have found the historic proof of 
this conception. The moment we know what did actually 
take place in humanity at that time, and we realise that it 
was this very thing that was taking place that was sym- 
bolised in Christ in terms of the Jehovistic idea when He 
went to the Cross, then it becomes a matter of absolute cer- 
tainty that Christ did reveal in Himself the intention of the 
Heavenly Father, Whose Son He claimed in a specific 
sense to be. And it also becomes clear that the Christo- 
centric religion of St. Paul was not a complex of phantas- 
mal ideas culled from various sources, but that it was the 
exact and truthful rendering of the element of redemption 
with which the original vision of Jehovah was pregnant. 

The rejection of St. Paul by the Jews, and the resistance 
that he experienced from the Jewish Christians themselves, 
was the main cause of the initial weakness of Christianity 
in its prolonged contest with Mithraism. Both religions 
commenced their propaganda about the same time, but 
Mithraism rapidly forged ahead and became predominant 
throughout the whole Empire, whilst Christianity was still 
struggling ineffectually in obscurity. Yet Christianity, as 
presented by St. Paul, was undoubtedly the more perfect 
of the two religions, and it contained within itself all the 


GREEK AND ROMAN RACIAL MOVEMENTS 375 

elements of success, for we know that it eventually did suc- 
ceed. But before it could succeed, its case had to be 
presented in a solid and convincing manner, and this was 
impossible so long as the spirit of resistance to his inter- 
pretation survived in the Christian communities. We 
know from the New Testament itself how effectually this 
resistance operated throughout the life of St. Paul, and we 
must realise that it must have gone on for a very long 
period after his death. 

In the first place, it had the effect of compelling St. Paul 
to express his message completely in terms capable of satis- 
fying the requirements of the Gentile world, since it was 
only the Gentiles who were inclined to receive it. Thus he 
was led to use terms and expressions which we know were 
in themselves a source of weakness, and gave rise to the 
Gnostic and Marcionite heresies which distracted and 
weakened the growing Church during the second century. 
But beyond that, this resistance continued long after St. 
Paul’s death to discredit his teaching, even where this teach- 
ing was only expressed in the sense that he intended it 
to convey. For Paul’s doctrine involved, on the one 
hand a conception of Jehovah which was rejected by the 
Jews, who, in the eyes of the Gentile world, were responsi- 
ble for the idea of Jehovah; and on the other hand it in- 
volved a conception of Christ which was in great measure 
rejected by those who had been his disciples. The destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem, indeed, had the necessary effect of com- 
pletely shattering the position of those who remained 
staunch to the disciples’ interpretation of Christ’s mission, 
but they were not necessarily convinced of the rightness of 
Paul’s view because their own position had been rendered 
untenable. Thus, although the Church managed to survive 
and to slowly grow in strength during the first two cen- 


376 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

turies, its success was nothing compared with that of 
Mithraism. 

Slowly, however, the Church emerged from its diffi- 
culties, and, as the resistance to Paul’s interpretation 
weakened, it succeeded in consolidating its position in 
the great doctrine of the Trinity which is peculiar to 
itself. In this Christian Trinity there is presented in the 
first figure, the Creator: in the second figure, the creative 
agency through which the Creator operates on humanity, 
and brings about both the growth and the redemption from 
the conditions entailed by that growth : in the third figure, 
the personal influence or condition which emanates from 
the creative agency and affects every individual separately. 
From our point of view we can see that what the Church 
did by means of this doctrine was to embody the two 
revelations — the Jehovistic and the pagan — in one single 
illuminating conception which completely expressed the 
operation and the relation of the different factors that were 
concerned in the work of redemption that was going on : and 
it expressed the operation and the relation of these different 
factors in a universal and predestined form which, because 
it was an exact rendering of the truth, made it completely 
independent of the tribal ideas of Judaism and acceptable 
to the keen minds engrossed in the religious problems of the 
day. In this form, Pauline Christianity became self-con- 
tained and self-sufficient, and it thus no longer 
was the despised rival of Mithraism which it had hitherto 
been. 

But during its two centuries of weakness, the Church 
had lost a great deal of the essential meaning of Chris- 
tianity. As it stood in the middle of the third century, 
there was nothing in it that made it stronger than Mithra- 
ism except the fact that it was enshrined in the living per- 


GREEK AND ROMAN RACIAL MOVEMENTS 377 

sonality of Christ. From our point of view, of course, the 
Christian scheme of redemption possesses a significance in 
the world-drama of human evolution far superior to any 
with which Mithraism could invest itself. But in order 
that this significance should manifest itself, it was neces- 
sary that the true character of the original vision of Je- 
hovah should be clearly kept in view, for on this necessarily 
depended the whole meaning of the act of the redemption. 
But the character of the original vision of Jehovah had be- 
come completely obscured during these two centuries, partly 
from the confusion of thought which reigned within the 
Church itself, and partly from the constant necessity under 
which the Church laboured to compromise with and absorb 
into itself the conceptions of the predominant cult. The 
Christians of the third century were not at all sure that the 
act of redemption was designed to enable them to win ever- 
lasting life by living a better life in this world; they were 
beginning to believe that it was designed to enable them 
to win everlasting life by entirely neglecting this material 
world and withdrawing themselves from it Although quite 
ready to die in vindication of their belief that Christ was 
the Son of God, they had failed to keep in mind which or 
what God it was that Christ was the Son of, and they had 
already begun to identify Jehovah more or less with the 
Ahura-mazda and the Brahman of Oriental Paganism. 
Hence Christianity was not at this time stronger in this 
respect than Mithraism, for it must be remembered that 
Mithraism, in response to the necessities of the situation, 
had considerably modified its ethical side, and that love 
and good fellowship were as common features of the 
Mithraic communities as they were of the Christian 
Churches. The two systems had, in fact, at this period 
become so exactly similar that there was nothing either in 


378 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

the theory or the practice of Christianity to give it the 
advantage over its rival. 

Yet we know that by the end of the third century the 
ascendancy of the Mithraic religion was rapidly waning, 
and Christ was being hailed by ever increasing multitudes 
as the redeemer of humanity. At the very beginning of the 
fourth century, the triumph of Christianity had become so 
sure that Constantine found it expedient to make it his 
official religion; and fifty years later it was so firmly estab- 
lished that when Julian tried to reinstate Mithraism as the 
official and universal cult, the tears of the women were 
sufficient, as Libanius tells us, to prevent the consummation 
of the Emperor’s design. And when we ask ourselves how 
it was that Christianity did triumph over a system so identi- 
cal in every respect with itself, it is not difficult to find the 
answer. It was the fact that Christ was a living per- 
sonality, whose real existence could be easily verified in 
those days, that finally assured its victory. The Greeks 
and Romans had progressed so far in objective develop- 
ment that at that time, although they were generally re- 
lapsing into mysticism, any conception that was to appeal 
to them had to have in it an element of reality; they were 
not so completely in the grip of a purely subjective form 
of ideation as the Oriental nations had been. The reader 
will remember that every religion that has appealed to the 
modern races has had to possess this element of reality; has 
had, in other words, to be enshrined in a living person- 
ality. Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Manichseism were 
each thus enshrined in a living personality. During the 
Archaic period, this necessity had never existed, and even 
when a man’s genius was mainly responsible for the par- 
ticular form of any religion, his followers never thought of 
identifying him with its expression; but in the modern 


GREEK AND ROMAN RACIAL MOVEMENTS 379 

period, as a result of the objective development of the new 
mind-organ, it became a psychological necessity that any 
revelation of the divine that was to appeal to it should 
be. incarnate in human form. And if we consider the cir- 
cumstances dispassionately, we must needs come to the con- 
clusion that it was this element in Christianity that gave 
to it the victory in the great struggle. All that related to 
Mithra belonged to the realm of a pagan mythology, about 
the reality of which the cultured Greeks and Romans of 
that period were very doubtful. It was claimed, indeed, 
that Mithra had assumed the human form, but the evidence 
on that point was necessarily very feeble. The whole issue 
turned on the possibility in those times of proving that 
Christ had lived and died in the manner He was said to 
have done in the Gospels. It was obviously to the interest 
of Mithraism to prevent this proof being obtained, and to 
convince everybody, on the other hand, that the whole story 
of Christ was a myth invented by the Jews to supplant 
their own redeemer. When we bear in mind the fact that 
Mithraism was the predominant and official religion, and 
realise that this position gave it unlimited power of ob- 
struction, we must come to the conclusion that the Chris- 
tians must have found it very difficult to prove their con- 
tention. The fact that Christianity did triumph, therefore, 
seems to show that there did exist at that time much more 
evidence concerning the real existence of Christ than we 
possess at the present day; that the fact, indeed, at that 
time was capable of such complete verification that not all 
the influence or the power that Mithraism possessed could 
prevent it becoming generally known and accepted that 
Christ was a man who had lived and died in the manner 
described in the Gospels. 

During the next few centuries, the Roman Racial move- 


380 the significance of ancient religions 

ment was rapidly decaying, and this decay was manifesting 
itself, not only in the social, moral, and political condition 
of the Empire, but also in the intellects of the men who 
directed and determined the thought of the time. Thus 
we should expect to find in this thought a relapse into that 
complete subjectivity which was characteristic of those great 
Oriental nations that immediately preceded the Greeks and 
Romans; and it is obvious that this relapse did take place. 
We can study it either in the development of Neo-platon- 
ism or in the writings of the Church Fathers themselves. 
These two separate channels of thought were both pos- 
sessed of the same tendency to draw right away from this 
material world, and to induce in the individual a com- 
pletely subjective mental attitude in which nothing ap- 
peared to have any importance, or to have any reality, 
but that self-consciousness in which was enshrined the 
image of the divine and the eternal. So late as the end of 
the second century, Tertullian could still boast that Chris- 
tians were not ascetics like the men of India; that they did 
not strive to separate themselves from the world; and that 
the enjoyment and maintenance of a civilised mode of ex- 
istence on this earth was an essential part of the obligations 
imposed on them. But as time went on, this conception 
rapidly changed; and the extremest form of asceticism be- 
came the Christian ideal. This material existence was not 
only of no importance, but it was actually criminal to try 
to enjoy it or to make others enjoy it. The whole object 
of creation was eternal salvation. This was the only thing 
that mattered: and the whole energy of the Church was 
devoted to drawing up a scheme of belief and procedure, in 
every case derived from paganism itself, which might en- 
sure to the individual the attainment of this highest good. 
Neither knowledge, nor civilisation, nor morality, nor jus- 


GREEK AND ROMAN RACIAL MOVEMENT 381 

tice, were of any importance. They were, indeed, to be 
condemned or destroyed if in any way they interfered with 
the scheme of salvation which the Church had ordained. 
The predominant ideal was that of the ascetic who hated 
and completely ignored the material world and his material 
existence, and lived only in that sense of the divine and eter- 
nal which grew and expanded within him in proportion as 
he intensified his self-consciousness. Naturally enough, 
the drift went on until the rankest forms of idolatry, of 
superstition, and of ignorance became the means by which 
the religious spirit was sustained. In other words, the 
truth expressed in ecclesiastic and dogmatic Christianity 
clothed itself in these later centuries completely in terms 
of Oriental Paganism, until to all seeming there was 
nothing left in it of the original vision of Jehovah. Never- 
theless, it has in this way been preserved, ready for use the 
moment that humanity became capable of realising its sig- 
nificance. 


CHAPTER II 


THE MOHAMMEDAN, MEDIAEVAL AND PROTESTANT RACIAL 
MOVEMENTS 

I have said that what took place in the two Racial move- 
ments subsequent to the Roman was the synthetic organisa- 
tion of the cells of layer B in relation to A. This syn- 
thetic organisation effected itself in two stages, one of which 
is expressed in the Mohammedan Racial movement, and 
the other in the Mediaeval Catholic. 

In the first stage, only the nearest cells of layer B would 
come into operation in addition to A. We should therefore 
expect the religious effervescence resulting from excitation 
of layer B to be strongly tinctured by the passion element; 
and this is, as a matter of fact, the character of the religious 
consciousness which produced Mohammedanism. The spe- 
cial characteristic of this religion was that it sanctified the 
passions and made them the instruments of its ascendency. 
The true believer was enjoined to fight for the supremacy 
of his religion; and all the hardships and dangers that this 
obligation made him liable to were compensated by the 
assured prospect of an eternal paradise after death. The 
chief attraction of this paradise lay in its promise of endless 
sexual enjoyment, the capacity for which would be increased 
a hundredfold, in the company of an infinite number of 
heavenly embodiments of the delights that passion craves 
for. Thus, whilst the deity actually worshipped was the 
Hebrew Jehovah-Elohim, the religious consciousness of Mo- 
hammedanism was, in respect of this element, a pale re- 
382 


THE MEDIAEVAL RACIAL MOVEMENT 383 

flection of the religious consciousness of the Babylonians. 
It had, however, to meet the resistance of a Racial instinct 
which was freer and more vigorous than during the Baby- 
lonian period, and therefore better able to enforce its nat- 
ural tendencies towards material civilisation and culture. 
It differed also from the Babylonian in the emphasis which 
it placed on the everlasting life, and the extraordinary 
realism of the joys which it ascribed to it. In this respect 
Mohammedanism is unique amongst all religions. There 
are, of course, as we should expect, some traces of transcen- 
dentalism in Mohammedanism, which express themselves, 
not only in the fundamental ideas of the religion, but also 
in the later developments towards mysticism which made 
themselves manifest here and there throughout the ages. 
But all these transcendental tendencies were very feeble, 
and scarcely affected the brutality of the passion element 
which constituted the chief factor in the divine impulsion 
to which it gave rise. Mohammedanism was, and has al- 
ways remained, a religion in which the predominating influ- 
ence is that of the passionate element. 

But the very fact that Mohammedanism was incapable 
of rising into any high degree of transcendentalism made it, 
in some respects, more compatible with material civilisation 
and culture than either Brahminism or the Mediaeval form 
of Christianity. For it is the ascetic attitude induced by 
the higher forms of transcendentalism which is the greatest 
enemy to material civilisation and culture. Thus in Mo- 
hammedanism throughout all the ages there has never been 
the slightest tendency to separate the priesthood and give 
it unlimited powers, nor the slightest tendency to create any- 
thing approaching a system of caste in the social organisa- 
tion, nor the slightest tendency to interfere with the natural 
desire of the individual to enjoy his earthly existence. Its 


384 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

theology, moreover, was so simple and so devoid of con- 
tradictions that it never came into conflict with the growing 
objective intelligence of the individual. These two circum- 
stances completely explain the tremendous hold which the 
religion possessed, and has continued to possess, over those 
who embraced it. During the whole of Mohammedan his- 
tory, there has never occurred that reaction against the re- 
ligion which, in the case of Mediaeval Christianity, was 
aroused in the course of the natural development of the 
Racial movement. There never occurred, throughout the 
whole course of the Mohammedan Racial movement, that 
phase of profound infidelity which was widely prevalent in 
Europe at the zenith of the Mediaeval Racial movement. 
The Arabian philosophers could assimilate the wisdom 
of Greek philosophy without putting any strain on their 
faith. By energising and sanctifying the passions, in- 
deed, the religion obstructed the civilising influence of the 
Racial development, and made the individual naturally 
averse to submitting himself to the obligations imposed on 
him by the necessities of social existence. But so long as 
the energy of the Race was such that conquest abroad was 
easy, that is to say, during the whole of its period of 
growth, the passions found vent elsewhere, and did not 
damage the justice, freedom, and equality of internal social 
relations. During the whole period of growth, therefore, 
no reaction set in against the religion itself, and the hold 
that it obtained over that section of humanity which was 
affected by the Arabian Racial movement is only equalled 
by that of the great pagan religions in the Archaic period of 
human development. 

But the very fact that this religion aroused no reaction 
against itself militated against the stability of the material 
civilisation and culture with which it was associated. For 


THE MEDIAEVAL RACIAL MOVEMENT 385 

although it created neither a social system nor a transcen- 
dental attitude incompatible with material civilisation and 
culture, its insidious effect in energising the passions exer- 
cised a catastrophic effect on the destinies of the Moham- 
medan nations. In some respects, the civilisation of these 
Mohammedan states was very perfect, but the most re- 
markable thing about them is their premature decay; they 
are specially characterised in the annals of human history 
by the rapidity with which they passed in their decay from 
the very highest excellence and productiveness of a civilised 
mode of existence to the profoundest corruption and sterility 
of a state of barbarism. The moment conquest abroad be- 
came difficult, the internal harmony of social relations dis- 
appeared at once, and with it all the high achievements of 
a period of intense productive activity. The turbulent 
egotism and the passions energised by the religion now bit 
into the social structure itself and destroyed its cohesion; 
the governments, in every case, became intensely despotic, 
and the resulting confusion and anarchy became all the 
greater because there was no stratification of society, and 
because, therefore, the highest official in the state was liable 
to be treated as badly as the lowest peasant. The moment 
the zenith of the Racial movement was past, all the Mo- 
hammedan states fell into a process of decay which was 
more rapid and more profound than has been the case in 
any other Racial movement in the Modern period of human 
development; and the final effect of Mohammedanism has 
been to destroy every vestige of material civilisation and 
culture in all the areas where it has remained dominant. 
This process of decay was incapable of being arrested, or 
even mitigated, by any outside influence, because of the 
tremendous grip over the individual of a religion which 
energised the passions. The Mohammedans remained 


386 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

faithful to their religion, but they dropped completely out 
of the general current of human progress. 

We now come to a period of human history which has 
perhaps perplexed the philosophic historian more than any 
other. This period embraces the five centuries which lie 
between the beginning of the Xlth and the beginning of the 
XVIth. For although it was obviously a period of great 
constructive energy, it liberated and energised forces which 
were so thoroughly antagonistic to each other that it ap- 
pears to lack at first sight that unity and coherence which 
is so clearly evident in the corresponding phases of the 
Greek, Roman, and Mohammedan Racial movements. 
Nevertheless, this unity and coherence become clearly evi- 
dent the moment we study these centuries in the light of 
our theory. 

In the Mediaeval Racial movement, we have the second 
stage in the synthetic organisation of layer B in relation to 
A. In this second stage, the upper layers of the Neo-andric 
mass would come into effective operation. The transcen- 
dental element would therefore be supreme in the religious 
consciousness, and whilst the main force of the Racial de- 
velopment would expend itself in an effort to impel human 
life and human thought into objective channels, and thus 
to produce material civilisation and culture: this tendency 
would be resisted, and effectively resisted at first, by the 
intense activity in the upper layers of the Neo-andric 
ganglia, which the process that was taking place naturally 
induced in the individual; and especially in the indivdual 
of higher intellectual capacity and genius. If we bear in 
mind the necessary interaction of these two opposing forces, 
and the limitations imposed on each by the very nature of 
the process that was taking place, the whole mystery of the 


THE MEDIAEVAL RACIAL MOVEMENT 387 

Xlth, Xllth, and Xlllth centuries will disappear, and the 
organic relationship of these centuries to the XIVth and 
XVth will at once become evident. And it will be neces- 
sary for me to say very few words to show the real under- 
lying unity of phenomena which, at first sight, appear to be 
the result of forces and of tendencies utterly divergent from 
each other. 

What was taking place was the synthetic organisation 
of layer B in relation to A. As the necessary result of the 
excitation of the upper layers of the Neo-andric mass, there 
was at first a tremendous effervescence of the religious con- 
sciousness, and in this the transcendental element was so 
supreme that it entirely dominated the situation. It tended 
inevitably to reproduce both in the religious and in the 
social systems the same state of things that had become 
prevalent in the Brahmin Racial movement. This tendency 
manifested itself with extraordinary vehemence at the very 
beginning of the Racial movement. It raised the Church 
at once to a supreme position, in which it claimed success- 
fully the determinant voice in all human affairs; whilst it 
reserved for itself complete immunity from the laws and the 
obligations which each state imposed on its citizens. It 
drove enormous numbers of men and women right away 
from the world, to seek in seclusion and in bodily tortures 
that spiritual self-exaltation in which alone they could 
realise the Deity. It caused them to regard with hate and 
loathing the material world and all that it contained, and 
to suppress every thought, every sensation, and every af- 
fection that threatened to bind them to it. It filled them 
with the belief that the everlasting life of an eternal future 
was the only thing that mattered, and it impelled them to 
regard everything that related to the social regeneration 
and the material welfare of humanity not only with indif- 


388 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

ference, but with hostile suspicion, lest efforts in this di- 
rection should increase that form of happiness and that 
form of mental activity which might divert the attention of 
the individual from the only thing that could assure him 
eternal salvation. Complete severance from the material 
world was the essential and only qualification for salvation, 
and the morality of all actions was judged simply by their 
relation to this standard. Every action, even though it 
involved a crime against humanity, was justified if it in 
any way redounded to the glory of the Church or smoothed 
the path towards that condition of absolute quietism on 
which the salvation of humanity depended. Those actions 
which are the most meritorious from the humane point of 
view were in themselves of very indifferent merit. They 
might, indeed, be regarded as sinful if in any way they 
tended to weaken that state of mind, or interfere with that 
organisation of society which it was the Church’s object to 
establish and to render universal. The great sins were 
those that interfered with asceticism, with the authority and 
the doctrine of the Church, or with the arrangements which 
secured to her ministers their supreme and unique position 
in the social economy. In other words, the religion that 
was dominant in the early part of the Mediaeval Racial 
movement was substantially an exact replica of Brahmin- 
ism; it attained its highest expression in St. Bernard of 
Clairveau, and anyone who studies his life, his teachings, 
and the influence which he exerted on the world in general, 
cannot fail to see that the religious consciousness that domi- 
nated him to such a supreme degree is identical in almost 
every respect with that which, three thousand years before, 
had led to the worship of the Brahman. And this similarity 
did not end with its effects on the religious ideals only; 
it shows itself in a most remarkable manner in the social 


THE MEDIEVAL RACIAL MOVEMENT 389 

organisation which became prevalent in Europe during the 
Xlth, Xllth, and XHIth centuries. The rigid classifica- 
tion of society at this period into ecclesiastics, nobles, 
burghers, and serfs, was absolutely different from the social 
organisation produced by each one of the four preceding 
Racial movements, — the Mohammedan, the Roman, the 
Greek, and the Hebrew ; but it was closely analogous, if not 
similar in every respect, to the corresponding organisation 
of Hindoo society, which is indicated in the sacred books 
of the Brahmins. The ethical basis in each case was that of 
the caste system, and the condition of the serf in the one 
was scarcely better than the condition of the Sudra in the 
other. 

This was the result of the religious effervescence over the 
whole area affected by the Racial movement, manifesting 
itself more particularly in the creation of innumerable 
cloistered communities, and especially in the consolidation 
of the feudal system in those parts of the area which had 
nothing to oppose to it but the tribal institutions of bar- 
baric times. In the towns of Northern Italy and Provence, 
however, which inherited the traditions of civic independ- 
ence from their Roman origin, the tendency towards ma- 
terial civilisation and culture was able to maintain itself 
in some fashion from the very first. In these cities, men 
strove to win for humanity some measure of justice and of 
freedom, and some enjoyment of life, but this movement 
was paralysed and rendered ineffective in the first place by 
the tremendous attraction that the monastic life possessed 
for the most highly developed individuals of that period. 
The men who possessed ability and genius in the highest de- 
gree and would, in other circumstances, have been the 
leaders in these movements towards material civilisation 
and culture, were drawn away and lost in the ranks of the 


390 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

cloistered communities. Thus allowed to express itself 
only in the minds of the multitude, the tendency towards 
material civilisation and culture had very little chance of 
making head against the difficulties which surrounded it, or 
of succeeding in developing itself in a satisfactory manner. 
But beyond the loss thus sustained, the movement was 
rendered ineffective by the active opposition which it en- 
countered from the Church and from the nobles within the 
cities themselves. Although not completely within the grip 
of the feudal system, these cities were, nevertheless, the 
prey of the turbulent egotism and the passions of nobles 
and ecclesiastics; and their history during the XI th, Xllth, 
and Xlllth centuries is mostly one of the most profound 
confusion and anarchy. There was plenty of vitality and of 
rebellious impulse in the democracy, but it was utterly 
wanting in moral courage and enthusiasm. The people 
were altogether a prey to those terrors which the lower 
levels of the religious consciousness were capable of inspir- 
ing. The chief effect that it had on them was to fill them 
with an overwhelming belief in hell and its demons, and an 
equally overwhelming belief that their only hope of salva- 
tion from the doom which awaited them lay in the good 
offices of the Church and its ministers. These beliefs, en- 
couraged by the Church by every means in its power, tended 
to produce a state of mind which was very much akin to 
that evoked by the first stage of the religious development 
— that of demon worship. In such a state the people were 
incapable of offering any resistance to the organised forces 
of ecclesiastical and feudal tyranny, and they in a large 
measure became simply pawns in the violent struggles be- 
tween noble and noble, and between noble and ecclesiastic. 
Here and there attempts were made to throw off the yoke, 
but in every case during this period these attempts ended in 


THE MEDIEVAL RACIAL MOVEMENT 391 

failure. Even an Emperor, Frederick II, had to rue the 
day when he tried to inaugurate an era of liberal culture 
and human freedom; and in the cities of Provence, the pre- 
mature expression of civilisation was extirpated by sword, 
fire, famine, and pestilence at the behest of the Church. 

One of the most important results of the antagonism 
between the two tendencies of equal force which made for 
a worldly and for a transcendental life respectively was 
the complete obliteration of any restraining influence on 
the great passions of humanity. In this respect, these cen- 
turies can easily challenge comparison with the most bar- 
barous phases of human history. The effect of this un- 
bridled condition of the passion element made itself equally 
manifest in the religious as well as in the worldly side of 
the Racial development. The devotional atmosphere was 
deeply impregnated with a sexual erethism which gave rise 
to strange visions and ecstasies in those who had vowed 
themselves to lives of chastity. The secular clergy, and 
even the cloistered communities, were so notoriously in- 
flamed with lustful desires that they invariably furnished 
a goodly portion of the unhappy contingent consigned to 
hell in those pictures of the Last Judgment which are still 
to be found in churches of that period. The blood lust 
and the cruelty of these ages are too much in evidence on 
every page of their history to need any emphasis, and the 
astonishing license and naturalism in sexual matters which 
was prevalent in all classes is manifest in the literature of 
the period, and especially in that Goliardic poetry which 
was used in all the festive gatherings of the people. In all 
this literature, love is not only treated from a frankly carnal 
point of view, but it is invariably represented as possessed 
of the inherent right to satisfy itself without reference to 
law, to decency, or to dogma. The festive gatherings of the 


392 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

period have been immortalised in many gems of artistic 
genius, and in them men and women behaved in exactly 
the same way as people of a more ancient age had behaved 
in the celebration of the Bacchic mysteries. But the most 
characteristic manner in which the passion element ex- 
pressed itself in Mediseval times was in the cult of chivalry 
and romance, a form of expression which is absolutely 
unique in the annals of history, and gives to these centuries 
some of their most interesting features. In this form, the 
passion element expresses itself in terms of an imagination 
which is held captive on the one side by the subjective, and 
on the other side by the objective consciousness; the passion 
element itself lying at the very point of contact between 
the two opposing forces. On the one side the passion ele- 
ment was inspired with a religious feeling which softened 
and attenuated its brutality; and on the other side it was 
drawn down into the circuit of civilised instincts, and thus 
had impressed on it some recognition of human obligations. 
The love that was extolled in the Lays of the Troubadours 
was hostile to the conjugal relation which civilisation de- 
mands as essential to its consolidarity ; but, on the other 
hand, it enforced on its votaries a constancy, a loyalty, and 
a sympathetic consideration which were foreign to the char- 
acter of passion. The warlike ardour of the knight bred 
in him many tendencies which were altogether hostile to 
civilisation; but the obligations and the feelings which 
chivalry imposed on him tinged the ruthless passion with a 
large amount of civilised virtue. Nevertheless, the reader 
must bear in mind that the very fact that in this form 
of its expression the passion element was held captive be- 
tween two opposing and equal forces, robbed it of much of 
its power to influence the will of the individual; and the 
cults of chivalry and romance were, in large part, merely 


393 


THE MEDIEVAL RACIAL MOVEMENT 

ideals which governed the imagination, but had very little 
real influence on human conduct. 

This was the condition of things during the Xlth, Xllth, 
and XHIth centuries, due to the transcendental character 
of the religious effervescence through the stimulation of the 
higher cells of the Neo-andric mass. But the actual process 
which gave rise to this stimulation was the synthetic or- 
ganisation of cells B in relation to A. Now I want the 
reader to clearly understand the nature of this synthetic 
organisation. Each one of cells A drew down into its own 
sphere of psychical activity several cells of layer B, and 
a specific relationship was therefore established between 
the two parts thus coming into apposition, and between the 
several elements of the whole group when finally consti- 
tuted. But as the whole development was uniform, what 
happened in respect of one grouping thus determined was 
exactly the same as what happened in respect of every other 
grouping. In other words, activity in layer B would tend 
to produce exactly the same treatment of A in one grouping 
as it would produce of A in another grouping. To put 
it in other words, the attitude of the mind with regard to 
its perceptions would become a logical one. The thing 
that was predicated of one perception had to be predicated 
of another the moment the other perception was proved to 
be identical with the first. And so far, indeed, as any 
identity could be established between two perceptions, the 
same thing had to be predicated of them. This is the very 
basis of the logical attitude of the objective mind, and it 
would necessarily come into collision at once with the be- 
haviour of the subjective mind. The latter had hitherto 
behaved as if the external world did not exist, and as if 
the perceptions which the individual had of the external 
world possessed no specific reality. Its attitude in regard 


394 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

to these perceptions had been, therefore, completely inde- 
pendent and autocratic. It insisted on treating two percep- 
tions which were identical in a differential manner, or ap- 
plying the same treatment to two perceptions which were 
essentially different, because it claimed to determine this 
treatment according to its own will and feeling, and not 
according to the nature of the reality which was immanent 
in the perception. Thus the two forms of consciousness 
derived from the stimulation into activity of layer B came 
at once into violent opposition. We should therefore ex- 
pect the religious effervescence, even in its early stages, to 
be associated with the development of a reasoning power 
which would slowly enfranchise itself from the restraints 
imposed on it by the intense religious domination to which 
it was subject. And, as a matter of fact, one of the main 
features of the Racial development of that period was the 
building up of a philosophy in which a new dialectic ex- 
pressed itself and its relations to theology. Previous to the 
Xlth century, there was little or no activity in philosophy 
considered separate from theology, for the two were in 
implicit unity. But from the Xlth to the XIVth centuries, 
the activity of this specific philosophy of scholasticism is 
very marked. It is entirely concerned with the logical rela- 
tions of the subjective and the objective — the universal and 
the particular — elements which were coming into apposi- 
tion. And from our point of view there is nothing more 
significant or interesting throughout the whole course of 
this Racial movement than the history of the Scholastic 
Philosophy; for its successive phases are the successive 
phases of the synthetic organisation of layer B in relation 
to A. 

In the Dark Ages, dialectic had been merely a secular art, 
and had not dared to intrude on the domain of theology. 


THE MEDIAEVAL RACIAL MOVEMENT 395 

But with the Xlth century it began to apply its terms and 
distinctions to the subject matter of theology. The earlier 
results of the application did not seem favourable to Chris- 
tian orthodoxy; hence the strength with which a cham- 
pion of the faith like Anselm insisted on the subordination 
of reason. To Bernard of Clairvaux, and many other 
Churchmen, the application of dialectic to the things of 
faith appeared as dangerous as it was impious. The reader 
must understand that the Mediaeval form of Christianity 
was particularly liable to attack in this respect, for it was 
not merely illogical in the sense that all the emanations of 
the subjective consciousness are illogical, but it contained 
within itself two different presentments of the religious 
consciousness which were absolutely antagonistic to each 
other. The dogmas which it had built up into data of 
faith were founded partly on the assumption that God was 
the Deity revealed to humanity in the figure of Jehovah, 
and partly on the assumption that He was a combination 
of Ahura-mazda and the Brahman. Therefore, throughout 
all the dogmas of the Church there ran an inevitable line 
of contradiction which reached up into its very highest mys- 
teries. The Mediaeval form of Christianity not only de- 
fied logic in respect of perceptions; it defied logic in the 
very data of the faith which it imposed on the individual. 
Thus, when Abelard issued his “Sic et Non” in the Xllth 
century, he gave a rude shock to the whole structure of 
ecclesiastical doctrine by simply arranging in two parallel 
columns extracts from the Fathers themselves relating to 
the mysteries of the Christian faith. The contradiction 
which ran between the two lines of parallel extracts was 
obvious to everybody; but the subjective consciousness at 
that time was still in general sufficiently supreme to enable 
St. Bernard to impress on the Council of Sens the belief 


396 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

that this apparent contradiction was one of the holiest and 
most sacred of the mysteries of the faith, and had not to be 
touched by the profane finger. At a later time, scholastic 
philosophy reached its culminating point in Thomas 
Aquinas. In his system, the rights of reason were fully 
established and acknowledged, and at the same time dia- 
lectic was made use of in a most admirable manner to 
establish the assumptions of theology. Certain doctrines, 
it is true, were withdrawn from the sphere of reason, but 
with these exceptions he appeared to have established a 
complete uniformity betwixt the philosophic and the re- 
ligious points of view. He did this by making free use of 
the treasures of Aristotelian philosophy which were newly 
discovered at the beginning of the XHIth century, and ap- 
plied as he applied them they appeared at first sight to 
rationalise the whole system of the Church. But as time 
went on it became evident that the triumph of the great 
dialectician was more apparent than real. It was found 
necessary to withdraw more and more theological doctrines 
from the possibility of rational proof, and to relegate them 
to the sphere of faith. It soon became evident that scho- 
lasticism had failed in its task, and that the doctrines of 
the Church were incapable of being brought into harmony 
with the logical tendencies that were manifesting them- 
selves in the human mind. But meanwhile, the transcen- 
dental theologians had been lured from the earlier inac- 
cessible attitude of St. Bernard by the fictitious triumph of 
Thomas Aquinas. In the schools and universities of the 
XHIth century, students imbibed their theology dressed up 
in a rational guise, without any hindrance from higher 
authorities; and even the most uncompromising Churchmen 
surrendered themselves to the attraction of a dialectic which 
was reputed to have established by argument the authority 


THE MEDLEVAL RACIAL MOVEMENT 397 

of faith. What had really happened was, in fact, the un- 
conscious establishment of the authority of reason. The 
claim of reason to manipulate the data of faith had been 
universally recognised, and once it had obtained this recog- 
nition it was confirmed in its supreme position by the whole 
objective development of the Racial movement, which was 
still in its period of growth. The ultimate failure of dia- 
lectic to rationalise the doctrines of the Church did not 
diminish the esteem in which reason was held ; it simply de- 
stroyed the credibility of the assumptions contained in these 
doctrines. The scepticism and infidelity which became 
prevalent throughout all the European nations during the 
XIVth and XVth centuries, even showing itself in 
the highest dignitaries of the Church, indicates a re- 
vulsion of feeling amongst, at any rate, all the cultured 
classes, which is not the less real because it is so amazing; 
following as it does the intense and universal religious 
fervour of the Xlth, Xllth, and XHIth centuries. 

The historical progression of human thought at this 
period, therefore, was in complete harmony with the con- 
ditions postulated in our theory. It was nothing less, and 
at the same time it was nothing more, than the expression 
of the psychological situation which developed as the result 
of a synthetic organisation of layer B in relation to A. 
From the first there was a tendency for this synthetic organ- 
isation to induce a logical complexion in the consciousness 
emitted by the stimulation of layer B. But at the begin- 
ning this tendency was comparatively weak, and completely 
overshadowed by the intensity of the religious effervescence 
induced by the stimulation of the same cells. As the process 
developed, however, the logical factor became supreme, and 
the subjective assumptions of theology had to defend and 
maintain themselves by expressing themselves in terms of 


398 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

human reason. But this process of rationalisation had so 
weakened the purely subjective element in consciousness 
that immediately afterwards it was found that the element 
of religious faith and conviction, which had been the expres- 
sion of its previous ascendency, had almost completely dis- 
appeared from the human mind. What had taken place 
was this : that the very cells which, at the beginning of the 
Racial movement, had given rise to the intense religious ef- 
fervescence, had now in all the most highly developed indi- 
viduals become constrained to act in a logical manner; and 
that so universally that the number of cells free from this 
constraint and therefore still capable of emitting a religious 
consciousness, formed a negligible quantity, too small to 
affect seriously the general mental attitude. In face of the 
cold intellectual analysis that followed, the assumptions of 
theology were found to be incompatible with human reason, 
and were therefore rejected by all those in whom the process 
thoroughly completed itself. The Church still maintained 
some of its ancient supremacy though the superstitious fears 
which the weakened religious consciousness continued to 
awaken in the individual, especially in the uncultured multi- 
tude; but the transcendental enthusiasm, which it had for- 
merly kindled in the most highly developed minds, now 
flickered only as a feeble flame in the breasts of those whose 
mental development was feeble ; and in the struggle between 
the two forces which made respectively for asceticism and 
for material civilisation, the latter became easily pre- 
ponderant. 

The reader who has followed me so far will now be able 
to see that the tremendous change that took place in the 
complexion of human thought and human affairs during 
the XIVth century, was the necessary and inevitable 
consequence of the synthetic organisation of brain cells 


THE MEDIAEVAL RACIAL MOVEMENT 399 

which had taken place. The whole force of the Racial de- 
velopment was now free to produce in the minds of men an 
overwhelming tendency towards material civilisation and 
culture, and towards the freedom and enjoyment of human 
existence. All the men of genius and of great mental abil- 
ity, who had hitherto been driven to separate themselves 
entirely from the material world, and to suppress in them- 
selves every faculty that bound them to it, now were im- 
pelled by an overwhelming instinct to turn to this material 
world, and to expend in its service all the powers of which 
they were possessed. The new era opened with Petrarch. 
He was the first humanist, and humanism was essentially 
the return to the objective method of thought. The 
transcendentalism of the past three centuries had robbed 
man of his dignity, and the material world of its value. 
Humanism restored them. It rejected those visions of a 
future and imagined state of souls as the only absolute real- 
ity, which had fascinated the imagination of the past ages, 
and asserted vehemently that it was the earthly existence of 
man and the material world in which he lived that were the 
great realities. It emphasised the rational and volitional 
independence of man, and his right to use and to enjoy all 
the blessings that this earth could afford him. It sustained 
itself by teaching what men had thought and done during 
the growing periods of the Greek and Roman Racial move- 
ments, and it inflamed all those whom it inspired with a 
desire to rescue from oblivion the great monuments of the 
past, and to develop to the full the human power and the 
goodliness which was manifest in them. The same ex- 
traordinary enthusiasm, the same vitalising faith which had 
made transcendentalism so oppressive during the last three 
centuries pervaded the work of Humanism in the XIVth 
and XVth centuries. The advancement of scholarship 


4 oo THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

became a thing in which every section of the people 
took an interest. The lecture rooms of learned men were 
crowded, and merchants instructed their agents in all parts 
of the world to make the search of the lost works of 
ancient authors a part of their ordinary business. And 
above all, there grew up at this time a power of artistic ex- 
pression which clothed every object to which it was applied 
with something of the virginal energy and beauty of the sub- 
jective element which was infusing itself into the material 
perceptions of humanity. The Church lent itself to the 
prevalent enthusiasm, and scholarship became the surest 
path to ecclesiastical and political honours. The conditions 
necessary for the development of this new spirit were most 
largely found in the Italian cities, and it was in them that 
the movement started and attained its earliest maturity. 

But although the achievement in material civilisation and 
culture was in some respects so great, it was extraordinarily 
limited and defective in others. Beneath the surface of 
brilliant social culture lurked gross appetites and savage 
passions unrestrained by piety and untutored by experience. 
Society exhibited an almost unexampled spectacle of lit- 
erary, artistic, and courtly refinements crossed by brutali- 
ties of lust, treasons, poisonings, assassinations, and vio- 
lence; in private, as well as in political life, force, intrigue, 
and treachery were rampant and triumphant. There was, 
in other words, a complete lack of morality in the individ- 
ual at this period, as well as a complete lack in the social 
organisation of any recognition of the supreme and indis- 
pensable function of morality in the maintenance of civ- 
ilisation. It was not merely that the individual had vices, 
but public opinion itself had nothing to say against them; 
and provided he had sufficient force to back him up, the 
victims of these vices had no means of obtaining justice. 


THE MEDIAEVAL RACIAL MOVEMENT 


401 


But however extraordinary this may seem at first sight, 
it is easily intelligible from our point of view. A Racial 
movement naturally makes for material civilisation and cul- 
ture, and if it has a free action, it necessarily establishes 
the moral instincts in the individual, and the universal rec- 
ognition of morality in the social organisation, as the very 
basis of that social harmony which it tends to create. But 
the reader will remember that, during the first three cen- 
turies of its existence, this Racial movement had been com- 
pletely prevented from doing anything of the kind by rea- 
son of the intense religious effervescence of the period, with 
its resultant ecclesiastic and feudal tyranny. How could it 
impress these moral instincts on the individual in face of 
the hostile suspicion with which the religious consciousness 
regarded them, and especially in face of the divine impul- 
sion which urged the individual to deny every claim that 
the world and his fellow-creatures might have upon him, 
and to seek for eternal salvation in the deification of his 
own self-consciousness? How could it impress on the social 
organisation a recognition of the supreme value of morality, 
so long as both ecclesiastic and noble were powerful enough 
to thwart its intention and refuse to allow any consider- 
ations for human welfare to determine their actions? It 
was, of course, impossible for it to do either of these things 
in the circumstances. And as a natural result when, to- 
wards the end of the growing period of the Racial move- 
ment, both the individual and the state freed themselves 
from the influences which had enthralled them, the char- 
acter and the institutions which were thereby set free were 
equally devoid of any moral basis. The whole force of 
the humanistic movement concentrated itself into an im- 
pulse towards a sensuous and selfish enjoyment of life, and 
the malignancy of this immoral impulse was increased a 


402 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

hundredfold by the inherent injustice of the social organ- 
isation which the XIVth and XV th centuries inherited from 
the preceding ones. The Church itself, having lost the re- 
straint imposed on it by the transcendentalism of the past, 
took advantage of the enormous power and the complete 
immunity that it possessed, and became the chief engine of 
the general corruption. No longer able to subsist through 
the higher enthusiasms of humanity, it did everything it 
could to foment and to increase the superstition of the 
masses. The cynical disregard for morality displayed by 
the highest dignitaries of the Church became an example 
to the lowest of those who exercised the power, and en- 
joyed the immunity, with which the priesthood was in- 
vested; and produced a state of things which would be in- 
credible if it were not so clearly attested and confirmed by 
incontrovertible evidence. Protests arose here and there all 
over the area affected by the Racial movement against this 
state of things. Savonarola in Italy, Huss in Bohemia, 
Wycliff in far-away England, were examples of men whose 
genius did, at different moments, voice the general indig- 
nation. But it was not until the torch lit by Luther caused 
the violent explosion of the dawning energies of the Prot- 
estant Racial movement, that these protests swelled into that 
massive revulsion of feeling which spread all over Europe, 
and forced on the Church the Counter-Reformation. 

With our own Racial movement, a new era commenced 
in the development of humanity, which is, in its own way, 
as separate and distinct from any other Racial movement as 
the Greek was from the Oriental world which had preceded 
it. This was due, in the first place, to the effect that the 
peculiar circumstances of its origin had on the development 
of its religious consciousness; and, in the second place, to 


THE MEDIEVAL RACIAL MOVEMENT 


403 


the fact that the mental apparatus for increasing the ob- 
jective intelligence of the individual had become fully de- 
veloped, and human thought was able to begin its assault 
on Nature. The tremendous abuses to which ecclesiastical 
domination had given rise were so patent to everybody, and 
had engendered such a revulsion of feeling in every coun- 
try in Christendom that the power of the religious con- 
sciousness was mitigated from the very first in the Prot- 
estant movement by the stern resolve that these things 
should be done away with. This revulsion of feeling man- 
ifested itself in every Roman Catholic country, and at one 
time it looked as if the Reformed religion was going to ef- 
fect the complete overthrow of the Papacy. But these 
signs of irritation subsided in all the countries where the 
Mediaeval Racial movement was predominant as soon as the 
splendid enthusiasm of the Jesuits had purged the Church 
of the corruption and the immorality which were sapping 
its hold on the peoples. There was not sufficient Racial 
energy remaining in these countries to survive the drastic 
reforms of the counter-reformation. But in those coun- 
tries which were to become the centres of Protestant devel- 
opment, every city and every state gave evidence of a stem 
determination that the ecclesiastical organisation should be 
secondary to the civil, and should not be allowed to inter- 
fere with the progression of humanity towards material 
civilisation and culture. Moreover, as the dominant men- 
tal attitude of the individual was an objective one, the re- 
ligious consciousness itself was, from the very first, in large 
part objective, and therefore allied with, and not opposed 
to, the moral tendency of the Racial development. Instead 
of weakening the moral instincts which the Racial develop- 
ment imposed on the individual, it strengthened and ener- 
gised them with all the force of a divine impulsion. Thus 


404 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

it expressed itself most perfectly, not in respect of a new 
system of theology, but as an outburst of moral indigna- 
tion against the ecclesiastical system which was responsible 
for so much iniquity in the external world. It was not so 
much in respect of dogma that this religious consciousness 
impeached the prevalent ecclesiastical system, but in respect 
of its catastrophic influence on the moral and material in- 
terests of humanity. Its theology, indeed, was so insecure 
and so lacking in authority that instead of unifying the Race 
it split up into a large number of antagonistic sects. It 
remained in all the sects saturated with the very dogmas 
which had brought the ecclesiastical system it condemned 
into existence; but its attack on this system had so com- 
pletely shattered the authority on which these dogmas rested 
that its own position became, from an intellectual point of 
view, very insecure. It was the consciousness of its weak- 
ness in this respect that caused it finally to adopt an at- 
titude of determined opposition to any form of intellectual 
activity. Nevertheless, its oppressive power has been in- 
finitely small compared with that exercised by religion in ■ 
the Mediaeval Racial movement. From the very first, the 
tendency of the Racial development to establish freedom 
in religious matters was triumphant; and equally so was 
the tendency to limit, and gradually to obliterate, the abuses 
of the Mediaeval social organisation. At the very begin- 
ning of the Racial movement, Bacon laid down the funda- I 
mental proposition of scientific philosophy, that all knowl- 
edge must depend on the observation of real facts in the 
external world. During the Mediaeval Racial movement, 
the observation of the external world had been entirely 
neglected, so that although the process of logical reasoning 
had become established, it could not produce any large 
growth of scientific knowledge. The discoveries of Galileo 


THE MEDIEVAL RACIAL MOVEMENT 


405 


and Copernicus, the invention of printing, of the mariner's 
compass, and of gunpowder, and the study of anatomy, 
are some indications of the dawn of a scientific method of 
thought. But in general the intellectual productions of 
that Racial movement betray no inkling of the fact that 
human thought was capable of penetrating beyond the nar- 
row limits of Greek and Roman ideas into the boundless 
regions of investigation which have been so fully exploited 
by modern science. In our Racial movement, on the other 
hand, the development of the scientific method of thought 
has been one of its most salient characteristics. As soon 
as the disturbance produced by the earlier religious and 
political struggles had somewhat quieted down, an unin- 
terrupted development of objective ideation made itself 
manifest, which has gradually endowed humanity with that 
tremendous grasp over the forces and materials of Nature 
which distinguishes this Racial movement in a very par- 
ticular manner from all those which have preceded it in 
human history. The results have been so striking, and 
have added so much to the dignity and well being of hu- 
man existence, that every section of humanity that is 
progressive and developing admits the claims of the ob- 
jective and scientific method of thought, and refuses to be 
guided in its advance by any other. Not the least re- 
markable of its results is that extraordinary growth of 
scholarship within the Churches themselves, which is ruth- 
lessly subjecting the fundamental assumptions of theology 
and the very Scriptures themselves, to a process of scientific 
enquiry; and when we reflect that this must result in the 
final emancipation of Christianity from Paganism, we can- 
not doubt that this application of the scientific method of 
thought, however harassed and obstructed it may be, will 
result in an achievement which will have even a greater 


406 the significance of ancient religions 

effect on the well being of humanity than the triumphs of 
this Racial movement in other spheres of activity. 

The characteristic feature of the development that has 
taken place during this Racial movement is, in short, the 
fact that great masses of ganglia, which had hitherto been 
completely subjective, have been drawn down into the 
circuit of objective ideation, so that all the radiance and 
the energy which belonged before solely to spiritual pres- 
entations have now been infused into our conceptions of 
the material world. The change which has thus been 
effected in human existence during the last four centuries 
puts into the shade that which is visible in the development 
of any other Racial movement. It is not so much, indeed, 
a progression that has taken place as a sudden leap for- 
ward, which it is utterly impossible to explain in the light 
of any theory of evolution but that which is contained in 
this book. I do not care what particular feature in this 
progression is taken as an example — whether it be the great 
spirit of humanity which is abroad, the transcendental feel- 
ing which has crept into the conjugal relationship, or even 
the personal cleanliness which is so distinctive a feature 
of our times — the key to each one of these changes will be 
found in the psychological situation postulated in my 
theory. We are told that we are not so capable of artistic 
expression as the peoples of other days; but is that really 
so. Do we not possess a power of artistic expression in 
music as great, if not greater than, the artistic achievement 
of every Race that has preceded us*? We are not as capa- 
ble of expressing the subjective in the plastic arts, or in 
painting, nor do we appreciate its expression in these 
forms when we meet them as highly as the classical 
and the Mediaeval peoples; simply because the layers 
of ganglia which were concerned in this expression in 


THE MEDIEVAL RACIAL MOVEMENT 407 

those times are, with us, so thoroughly drawn into the 
circuit of objective activity that the expression of the sub- 
jective through them is considerably impaired. It is only 
the higher layers of the Neo-andric mass that can in us 
express the subjective with perfect freedom, and without 
violence to our general state of mind; and as these higher 
layers have a specific and independent connection with the 
auditory sense, therefore it is natural that the expression of 
the great emotions should effect itself in the art of music. 
And in the development of the art of music, the position 
of this Racial movement is as supreme and unchallenged as 
that which it occupies in the development of scientific 
philosophy. 



BOOK IV 


FINAL CONSIDERATIONS 



CHAPTER I 


PROBLEMS OF MORBID PSYCHOLOGY 

It is therefore clear that the scheme of mental development 
propounded in this work affords us the key to the whole of 
the historical and religious development of humanity, and 
to the whole of the mental and moral character of the indi- 
vidual. But I wish to add a few words to the demonstra- 
tion to show that it affords us the key, not merely to normal 
conditions of consciousness, but equally to those pathologi- 
cal conditions which are, at the present day, the puzzle of 
the modern psychologist. 

The reader will understand that this scheme of develop- 
ment postulates a progressive organisation, layer by layer, 
of the Neo-andric mass from a subjective into an objective 
condition. Each layer has been brought into function by 
being incorporated with the one below it along a specific 
line of union, and as this process of incorporation is only 
a recent event in the history of humanity and by no means 
completed, it is liable to be relaxed, or even completely 
obliterated, along these lines of union, by any cause that can 
definitely injure the nutrition or the structure of the cere- 
bral tissue. Thus human consciousness is, on the one side, 
subjective and, on the other side objective. The normal 
condition is when the two sides grip each other so firmly 
that they present to the outside world one single indi- 
viduality, whose emotional and volitional powers are so 
completely in harmony with the intellectual as to produce 
unity of thought and unity of action in every conceivable 
circumstance. This normal condition of consciousness is 


412 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

the result of the normal state of the cerebral layers so long 
as they grip each other perfectly; but the moment you get 
a relaxation of this grip along any one of the definite lines 
of union, then you get an upper part which is more inclined 
to behave subjectively, and a lower part which behaves 
objectively. You get, in one word, what is called mental 
dissociation, and the phenomenon of mental dissociation lies 
at the basis of all pathological states of mind. In general, 
all pathological mental conditions may be divided into three 
groups; those that belong to Neurasthenia, those that be- 
long to Hysteria, and those that belong to Insanity. 

Both in neurasthenia and in hysteria, the sole cause de- 
termining all the symptoms is mental dissociation. In 
neurasthenia, which is the form of the affection most com- 
mon in men, the dissociation is generally, if not in all 
cases, simple; that is, it occurs only along one line of union. 
The particular line of union affected may vary, and the 
intensity of the dissociation may vary, so that the resulting 
phenomena may also vary very considerably. But in every 
case there is at once a distinct diminution of will-power, 
because the passage of energy from the subjective element, 
which contains most of it, into the objective is impeded and 
retarded. Every act and every thought now easily induces 
fatigue, and both the mental and the physical organisations 
of the individual are seriously crippled. Nervous pains of 
all kinds result from the difficulty with which the mental 
process completes itself, and a state of nervous exhaustion 
is induced as a result of the tremendous waste of energy 
that takes place before every thought and every act can 
complete itself. Moreover, since these higher ganglia are 
united by specific channels of communication with the 
viscera, and since the tremendous vital energy of these 
higher ganglia is constantly being used to maintain the 


PROBLEMS OF MORBID PSYCHOLOGY 


413 


efficiency of the bodily organisation of the individual, it 
is obvious that the disturbance of function which results 
from the act of mental dissociation must necessarily affect 
the physical organisation adversely, and produce all kinds 
of functional disturbance in the visceral organs. As the 
result of dissociation, again, the subjective element will be- 
come freer and less subject to the control of reason and 
perception. The patient may become highly emotional, 
irritable, liable to sudden storms of feeling, and especially 
credulous and susceptible to all the forms of suggestion. 
On the other hand, the dissociation may progress to such 
a point that the physiological activity of the upper part 
may become, in some slight degree, antagonistic to that of 
the lower part, and then we may have symptoms which 
faintly simulate those of some forms of real insanity. The 
strangest sensations may afflict him, and he may become 
highly suspicious, superstitious, wrapped up in himself, 
and full of fears that something terrible is going to happen 
to him. Nevertheless, although he may be suffering from 
all these feelings, the mental lesion is in reality so slight 
that he can at times completely hide them from any but 
the most skilled observation, and there is never in him that 
complete separation from the outside world which is the 
distinctive feature of real insanity. He is aware of all his 
obligations, and his imperfections fill him with the greatest 
distress; he longs for sympathy, and on the subject of his 
own ailments he is inclined rather to be garrulous than to 
be secretive. 

Hysteria is the form that the affection takes most com- 
monly in women. Here again it is dissociation, and dis- 
sociation only, which gives rise to all the symptoms. But 
the picture is a very different one, because of the different 
positions of the two sexes in the evolutionary movement. 


4 i4 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

Because the woman is not the developing creature in this 
Generic process, she is always a step behind the man in 
development, and therefore the upper element in her is very 
much more pronouncedly subjective than in the case of 
the man. But beyond that, as the result of her not being 
the developing creature, the actual grip which exists be- 
tween layer and layer of cells is very much less effective 
than in the case of the man. So that not only does dis- 
sociation occur more readily in her, but when it does occur it 
is very liable to become multiple instead of simple; that is 
to say, it may affect simultaneously or in rapid succession 
many lines of union instead of simply one. Once these de- 
velopmentary facts are grasped, the phenomena of hysteria 
become very easy to understand. The cause that produces 
neurasthenia must be sufficient to damage the integrity of 
the nervous tissues as a whole. It is this general enfeeble- 
ment which causes the dissociation, and the dominant phe- 
nomenon which overshadows everything else is loss of 
nervous power and capacity. But the cause that operates 
in hysteria acts directly on the lines of union betwixt the 
layers, because in women it is necessarily the points of con- 
tact between the layers that give way first, and the con- 
dition frequently establishes itself without any loss of 
power in the layers themselves. Thus the fundamental 
basis of hysterical phenomena is the liberation from control 
of an emotional element which, however, may be possessed 
of the most tremendous will-power; a will-power, indeed, 
which may be much greater than that which the patient 
manifests in her normal condition. This exaggerated will- 
power makes her act in defiance of her reason and her per- 
ceptions, so that she loses all sense of proportion and of the 
true values of things in the external world, and reveals in 
all her behaviour the predominance of a state of mind 


PROBLEMS OF MORBID PSYCHOLOGY 


4i5 


which is purely subjective. The waste of nervous energy 
resulting from the friction thus set up between the rebellious 
subjective element and the objective produces the same 
nervous exhaustion and the same nervous pains which are 
characteristic of neurasthenia, and the same interference 
with the organic functions of the body is a common result. 
But in this case the physical conditions induced or simu- 
lated may attain to a degree of intensity which is never 
seen in neurasthenia. Hysteria may simulate organic dis- 
eases so closely as to defy the observation of the most in- 
telligent expert. It may lead to complete paralysis which, 
if not treated promptly, may become permanent; and, in 
some cases, it may even so completely suppress the func- 
tions of one or other of the organs as to lead to death. But 
beyond all these phenomena which may happen when the 
line of dissociation is single, other complications may arise 
which are due to dissociation becoming multiple. These 
complications consist of a more or less complete alteration 
in the character of the individual, and this indeed may be- 
come the chief feature of the disease, so that it assumes a 
distinctly mental type, and approaches very closely to in- 
sanity. 

Finally when, in addition to the cause that produces 
mental dissociation, you have some other determinant which 
is capable of artificially stimulating the upper layers into 
an exaggerated state of psychical activity, you get acute in- 
sanity. The distinctive feature of acute insanity is that 
it is, in every case, an artificial reproduction of one or 
other of the mental states that were produced during the 
Archaic period by the normal process of mental develop- 
ment. In the Archaic period these mental states were the 
result of the enormous energy of the Neo-andric cells, due 
to the fact that the Generic development was in its period 


4 i6 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

of growth. In insanity at the present day we have, as the 
result of a morbid or artificial process, a similar exaggera- 
tion of the energy of the Neo-andric cells, and in conse- 
quence a reproduction of similar mental states. That this 
is so will become apparent if we compare the several phases 
of acute insanity with the several mental states which be- 
came predominant in the individual during the Archaic 
period of human development. We see at once that the 
former are an exact reproduction of the latter. 

In acute melancholia, the patient is filled with an all- 
pervading terror of his surroundings. He visualises in 
every object and in every person that he sees a malignant 
presence, and the resulting panic drives him to acts of 
suicide or homicide. This is exactly the mental state as- 
sociated with the first stage of the Generic development. 

In sub-acute melancholia, the individual is filled with 
fears of the same character as the preceding, but less vio- 
lent and acute. He is overwhelmed with a feeling that 
he is a poor and miserable creature incapable of all effort 
and self-assurance, that everybody is against him, that the 
whole of Nature is filled with influences hostile to him, that 
something terrible is sure to happen to him. He shrinks 
away into himself, incapable of making up his own mind 
about the most trivial matters, or of making head against 
the evil influences with which his surroundingings are preg- 
nant. He is driven to cling passionately for help and pro- 
tection to something or some person outside himself, and 
it is only in proportion as this instinct is capable of being 
satisfied that he avoids drifting into the more frenzied con- 
dition of the disease. This is exactly the mental state as- 
sociated with the second stage of Generic development. 

In exalted mania, the individual is filled with a tremen- 
dous sense of his own powers and importance. He is ex- 


PROBLEMS OF MORBID PSYCHOLOGY 


4i7 


alted in his own estimation far above the rest of humanity, 
and believes himself either to be God, or related in some 
special way to God. Full of divine inspiration, he be- 
lieves that it is his supreme right to lord it over his fellows, 
to teach them how to behave, and to punish them if they re- 
sist his wishes; he believes himself to be immortal, to be 
immune from the physical ailments and from the legal re- 
striction to which other people are liable. But his general 
attitude towards other people is a benevolent one, and he 
is not necessarily violent or malignant in disposition, es- 
pecially if his mental attitude and the actions that result 
from this attitude are not interfered with. Indeed, even 
when rendered violent by interference, his sense of humour 
may be so tickled by the obvious incapacity of others to 
realise his supreme position that his feelings may find vent 
in uproarious hilarity. This is an exact reproduction of 
the state of mind associated with the third stage of Generic 
development. 

In violent mania, the individual becomes a ferocious and 
erotic creature, filled with passions which render him malig- 
nant and dangerous in the highest degree. This is an exact 
reproduction of the mental state associated with the fourth 
stage of the Generic development. 

In self-persecuting insanity, the individual is filled with 
the idea that there is some part of his own soul which is 
evil, and that he is damned to all eternity if he does not 
get rid of that evil thing. He is filled with a sense of 
moral unworthiness, he has committed the unpardonable 
sin; or he feels that his very soul is in the grip of some- 
thing which is dead and rotten within him. This is an 
exact reproduction of the mental state associated with the 
fifth stage of Generic development. 

In stuporose mania, the individual is filled with an 


4 i8 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

overwhelming impulsion to separate himself entirely from 
the external world and his fellow creatures. He becomes 
wrapped up entirely in himself, and gradually loses his sense 
of external realities and of the obligations which these reali- 
ties impose on him. He hates and loathes the external 
world, and his feeling is especially concentrated against the 
material self which binds him to the external world. His 
consciousness becomes one single flame of self-torturing 
ecstasy. In the final stages, this condition may become so 
pronounced that he becomes to all appearance completely 
inanimate, with senses hermetically sealed, and with atten- 
tion completely absorbed in his subjective ecstasy, so that 
no outside impression has the slightest effect on him. That 
this apparent insensibility, however, is only the result of 
mental concentration is rendered strikingly evident by what 
inevitably happens when he is left alone with a knife or 
cord with which he can destroy himself. This, again, is 
an exact reproduction of the mental state associated with 
the sixth stage of Generic development. 

The moment the fact is realised that all the phases of 
acute insanity are simply reproductions of mental states 
predominant in the individual when the Neo-andric cells 
were inflamed with the full energy of Generic growth, the 
causation of insanity becomes easy to understand. It is 
only necessary to have, in addition to the cause which pro- 
duces mental dissociation, some determinant, such as a 
poison circulating in the blood, capable of artificially stimu- 
lating the layers of the Neo-andric mass into such a state 
of activity that they behave once more as they behaved in 
the Archaic period. And when we bear in mind the dis- 
ruptive influence which every phase of insanity must ex- 
ert on the coherence of the layers, we should expect to find 
in the actual picture presented to us by any individual case, 


PROBLEMS OF MORBID PSYCHOLOGY 


419 


sometimes a rapid passage from one phase to another, some- 
times a chaotic intermingling of symptoms that result from 
the excitation of several layers, and sometimes a rhythmical 
variation in the predominant phase. 

As we have already said, the progressive organisation of 
the Neo-andric mass has taken place layer by layer. But 
as each of these successive combinations of layers has rep- 
resented in consciousness the personality of the individual 
throughout the whole of a Racial movement, it is evident 
that each one of these successive combinations has within 
itself the capacity of acting completely and comprehensively 
as a complete individuality. Each one of these successive 
combinations is therefore self-contained, and can be sepa- 
rated from any other without damage to its own cells, or 
their psychical activity. This fully accounts for those 
cases of alternating individuality which frequently appear 
either as the result of hypnotism or of some pathological 
condition. With regard to this phenomenon, I would only 
like to point out that it is natural that the mind should 
apply a process of selection to the enormous number of im- 
pressions which it receives without being conscious of them. 
Such unconscious impressions would naturally group them- 
selves in each layer according to the relation which they 
bear to the individuality which belongs to it. Take, for 
example, the case of a girl who, in the course of her life 
has to skirt many experiences and listen to many expres- 
sions which are so foreign, so unintelligible, and so objec- 
tionable to her normal self that they are rejected by her 
conscious mind as things that cannot be woven into the 
texture of her individuality. Let us suppose that some 
shock or pathological condition induces in her a change of 
personality, and the layers which now become predominant 
in her are those that were specially affected during the Mo- 


420 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

hammedan Racial movement. Her character in this con- 
dition will be altogether different from her normal one, and 
it will approximate closely to that of an Odalisque. But 
the remarkable thing is, that with this change in her char- 
acter there will open out a consciousness of events, and a 
knowledge of certain forms of language of which, in her 
normal condition, there would be neither recollection nor 
understanding. Experiences which her consciousness had 
apparently never laid hold of will now be vividly remem- 
bered, and woven deeply into the fabric of her own indi- 
viduality. Not only her character, but the sum total of 
experiences which her consciousness recognises and remem- 
bers, is altogether different from that of her normal state. 
This is, indeed, one of the most striking things in the phe- 
nomenon of alternating personality. But it is not difficult 
to explain from our point of view. These impressions, 
which did not appear to touch her, have really been re- 
ceived by her brain; they have been rejected by the domi- 
nant layers, but they have been stored away in the layer 
appropriate to them, and in this condition they have lain 
hidden away and incapable of being revived by any con- 
scious effort. The moment, however, the change occurs, 
then the particular layer which has been thus furnished 
leaps into function as a distinct individuality, and the ex- 
periences which have been stored up in it are necessarily 
part of its texture and remembrance. 

Thus consciousness is the resultant of the psychical ac- 
tivity of a combination of layers which usually act coher- 
ently, but which, nevertheless, can be separated from each 
other without the slightest damage to the integrity of their 
internal arrangement. We may represent the individual 
as being normally a combination of two individualities, 
one is subjective and the other is objective. They are 


PROBLEMS OF MORBID PSYCHOLOGY 421 

linked together so closely that in the perfectly normal in- 
dividual the two form one single personality. Neverthe- 
less, the two individualities have separate existences, and 
these separate existences are carried on on either side of a 
definite line of union. The subjective individual is highly 
susceptible to suggestion, and any idea suggested to him is 
capable of producing a strong resultant on the internal ar- 
rangements of the body, and of largely influencing both 
bodily and mental states. The objective individual, on 
the other hand, interferes with and obliterates in varying 
degree this susceptibility to suggestion; because he opposes 
to it the factors of perception and of reasoning, and thus 
absorbs the greatest part of the stimulus which is applied, 
so that a very small part, if any, remains to reach the sub- 
jective individual. The objective element cannot induce 
changes in the internal arrangement of the body, or influ- 
ence mental and bodily states; so that even if the intellect 
assents to the suggestion, the mere fact that the greatest part 
of it is absorbed and dealt with by the objective element 
destroys the power which it would possess if it reached the 
subjective element directly. Thus, whilst the average in- 
dividual in his normal state is always in some small degree 
susceptible to suggestion, this susceptibility can be enor- 
mously increased if, by some means or other, the resistance 
of the objective element is diminished or removed for a 
time. It is in this possibility that lies the rationale of all 
forms of psychical therapeutics; by means of which it is 
possible to influence for good both mental and bodily states 
through the force of suggestion on the mind. 

In the scientific application of this method, what is 
known as hypnotic suggestion, the result is obtained without 
any damage either to the objective or to the subjective ele- 
ment, or to the line of union between the two. There is 


422 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

neither any abnormal exaggeration of the subjective ele- 
ment, nor any diminution of will-power, nor any intellec- 
tual degradation of the objective element. It therefore 
cures without hurting the individual in any way; and it is 
capable of being applied to the most highly developed in- 
dividuals whose mentality is most perfect. There is 
throughout the whole process no suggestion of a miracle or 
of any tampering with the laws of Nature. The patient 
is told that it is a natural process like any other medical or 
surgical procedure, and that the operator simply obtains 
the desired effect by stimulating into activity certain brain 
centres, and by directing the energy thus liberated in the 
required direction. He surrenders himself voluntarily to 
a process which lulls his objective faculties into varying 
degrees of insensibility. The objective layer goes for a 
short while to sleep, and the operator therefore comes into 
direct contact with the subjective element and influences 
it through the auditory sense. Provided his appeal is 
couched in terms appropriate to the mentality of the patient, 
and provided, moreover, he does not demand anything 
which is opposed to the general moral disposition of the 
individual, it is almost impossible for the subjective ele- 
ment to resist the appeal. It is just as hopeless to try and 
eliminate from a person’s character some peculiarity which 
is in conformity with his general disposition, as it is im- 
possible to implant in the patient’s mind a tendency which 
is at variance with the general disposition. But in the 
case of peculiarities which are at variance with the indi- 
vidual’s general disposition, and which he wishes to get 
rid of — peculiarities, therefore, which are pathological in 
their nature — the appeal made by the operator is almost 
invariably successful. It may even be successful in cases 
of insanity where one or more of the layers still remain un- 


PROBLEMS OF MORBID PSYCHOLOGY 423 

affected by the diseased process, and are therefore sus- 
ceptible to his ministration; provided the initial lulling of 
the objective sensibility can be effected. In such cases, the 
healthy subjective element identifies itself with the sugges- 
tions made by the operator, and the tremendous nervous en- 
ergy thus liberated becomes the cause of the cure. But this 
voluntary sleep into which the objective element falls in- 
volves no damage to itself or to the subjective element, or to 
the bonds that unite the two. Each of these several parts re- 
mains as strong as it was before, and when the application 
is at an end, the objective mind wakes up and resumes its 
place in the personality of the individual without the 
slightest damage having been done to its intellectual func- 
tions, or to its union with the subjective element. The 
process should, of course, be treated like a surgical pro- 
cedure, hedged round and limited by all the safeguards that 
enable us to benefit from the triumphs of scientific surgery 
without suffering from the ignorance of incompetent opera- 
tors, or the possible abuses that an unrestricted license to 
cut up the human being might engender. But treated and 
applied in this way, there can be no doubt that this method 
of therapeutical procedure is capable of yielding results as 
brilliant as any of the achievements of surgery and medicine 
in other directions. 

Once the patient is rendered susceptible to suggestion, 
the mechanism of the cure effected is exactly the same in 
hypnotism as that which operates in all the forms of faith- 
healing and Christian Science. Where the latter differ 
radically from scientific hypnotism is in the different proc- 
ess adopted to secure the susceptibility of the patient; and 
it is this difference which makes them dangerous to the pa- 
tient, uncertain in their effects, and finally inapplicable to 
those individuals who are highly developed, and whose 


424 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

mentality is therefore strongly intellectual. For in both 
faith-healing and Christian Science, the stage of suscepti- 
bility is reached by an intellectual degradation of the ob- 
jective element, which damages it so completely that it is 
put hors de combat . This crippled condition is not a tem- 
porary one; it is permanent, because it is effected whilst 
the objective element is fully conscious. The individual 
must consciously stultify his own intellect, and train him- 
self so that it completely loses its grasp of the outside 
world, and its own logical stability. In other words, the 
whole of the intellectual apparatus of the individual must 
become disorganised before he becomes capable of reaching 
the stage of susceptibility which allows suggestion to pro- 
duce the desired result. 

In all forms of faith-healing, the stage of susceptibility 
is reached by the overwhelming force of a belief that a 
miracle is possible, and is going to be performed. Now 
the whole of the development which has taken place during 
the last three thousand years has tended to produce a state 
of mind which is absolutely incompatible with the belief 
in miracles; and especially at the present day the efficiency 
of every act, and the integrity of every thought, are based 
on the conviction that the laws of Nature are eternal and 
unchangeable, and that there exists no “deus ex machina” 
capable of interfering with them. In other words, in order 
to arrive at the stage of susceptibility, the individual has 
to undergo a process of intellectual degradation; and this, 
in some forms of faith-healing where the instrument that 
rivets the patient’s attention, and which he believes is go- 
ing to effect his cure, is a relic, or an image of some sort, 
may be extremely profound. But there is, moreover, a 
very considerable danger of moral degradation, for in faith- 
healing the object is attained by a tremendous excitation 


PROBLEMS OF MORBID PSYCHOLOGY 425 

of the religious consciousness; and the religious conscious- 
ness, as we have seen, if carelessly handled, and especially 
if inflamed at its lower depths, may actually induce in the 
individual a most tremendous moral perversion. These 
objections to its use caused faith-healing, which was so 
widely practised during the Middle Ages, to fall into dis- 
repute in later times. Most of the Reformed Churches 
abandoned its use completely, and faith-healing became, 
until very recently, a practice condemned by the vast ma- 
jority. 

In Christian Science, on the other hand, the stage of 
susceptibility is reached by inducing in the individual an 
overwhelming belief that the external world, with all its 
material forms and the sensations that we derive from them, 
has no real existence. The existence of matter, and the 
sensations that reveal to us the presence and the condition 
of matter, are pure delusions. In one word, there is no re- 
ality in anything that is objective; the only reality is the 
deified self-consciousness of the individual, which is capable 
of being so intensified that it can free itself from the shad- 
ows and the delusions of the objective mind, and thus be- 
come capable of acting universally in whatever manner it 
thinks fit. This belief is forced on the objective mind 
when it is in full conscious activity, and the objective mind, 
which naturally rejects it, has, nevertheless, to submit to 
its disintegrating influence before the stage of susceptibility 
can be reached. That is to say, the patient who submits 
to the operation of Christian Science has to undergo a proc- 
ess of intellectual degradation so complete that it renders 
ineffective in him the whole of the mental development that 
has taken place during the last three thousand years, and 
causes him to revert to the mental condition which at- 
tained its full expression in the Brahmin Racial movement. 


426 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

The intellectual degradation, therefore, is just as profound 
as in any form of faith-healing. 

In all the forms of faith-healing, as well as in Christian 
Science, therefore, the stage of susceptibility is only 
reached by a process of intellectual degradation. If, how- 
ever, the intellectual stability of the individual is so great 
that it successfully resists this process of degradation, then 
neither faith-healing nor Christian Science can produce any 
curative effect. We may put it in this way; that the in- 
dividual must be some sort of a fool before either faith- 
healing or Christian Science can be successful with him. 
If he is not any kind of a fool, then it would be impossible 
for them to produce in him that susceptibility to suggestion 
on which cure depends; and whatever may be the degree 
or the kind of foolishness which allows either of these 
processes to be successful, they will both tend to increase 
it enormously. 

It is easy enough to explain from our point of view the 
great attraction that Christian Science possesses at the pres- 
ent day for individuals of even great mental activity, if the 
subjective element happens to be predominant in them, and 
not sufficiently brought into harmony with the objective. 
The reader must remember that even in our present state 
there are a large number of the higher cells of the Neo- 
andric mass, at least one-fifth of the whole, that are still 
completely subjective and completely detached from the 
outside world. The condition of these cells does not seri- 
ously interfere with the mentality of those in whom the 
intellectual organisation of the lower layers has reached a 
high degree of perfection. But wherever the intellectual 
organisation of layer B is not complete, and especially 
where the grip between the different layers is not perfect, 
then these detached cells of layer C become of great im- 


PROBLEMS OF MORBID PSYCHOLOGY 427 

portance. Strenuous mental activity is then apt to bring 
them within the sphere of psychical disturbance, and the 
inevitable result of this is to increase enormously the power 
of the subjective element, and to throw out of gear the 
whole of the intellectual function. But the completely 
subjective state which Christian Science demands before it 
can effect any cure is exactly the state of consciousness 
which the excitation of layer C tends to induce. It is for 
this reason that Christian Science is particularly attractive 
to minds that are so active and self-sufficient that they eas- 
ily reject the authority both of science and of religion. 
The number of minds which it is capable of attracting and 
influencing has been enormously increased during the last 
thirty years by the higher education of women. These 
minds would naturally recoil in disgust from the grosser 
forms of faith-healing, but they fall an easy prey to Chris- 
tian Science; and the harm that it does to them, by endow- 
ing the subjective element with an enormous increase of 
energy, and by utterly destroying the intellectual coherence 
of the objective element, is incalculable, and may easily 
eventuate in some form of insanity. 


CHAPTER II 


BIOLOGICAL RELATIONS 

But it is possible, by going only a step further and pass- 
ing beyond the narrow limits of its operation in the his- 
torical evolution of humanity, to show that our postulate 
is perfectly sound on its biological side, and that it does not 
clash in any way with the belief that in biological evolu- 
tion Natural Selection has been the great determinant of the 
line of progression. In order to account for the marvellous 
transformations and adaptations of structure which exist 
everywhere in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and have 
rendered possible a survival in the struggle for existence — 
in some cases extending to a complete masking of the real 
Generic identity of the individual, and the simulation of a 
totally different guise — it is necessary to assume, not only 
that Natural Selection has the power of preserving quali- 
ties that are useful in the struggle for existence, but fur- 
ther, that it has the power of determining the actual di- 
rection in which modifications are to occur throughout a 
long line of evolutionary progression. This is the central 
conception of the great theory by means of which the genius 
of Darwin first enabled us to grasp the fact of evolution; 
and I will now show, in as concise a manner as possible, 
that the vast influence exerted by Natural Selection in de- 
termining the line of progression in the course of evolution 
is a necessary corollary of our postulate. 

I have said that during the life-time of each Racial Organ- 
ism, the virginal elements contained in each mass of Germ- 
plasm, being themselves active and full of developmental 
428 


BIOLOGICAL RELATIONS 


429 


energy, take part in the general growth of the individual; 
and the individual thereby becomes furnished with a widely 
distributed texture of formative material, which is capable 
of elaboration into organised structures endowed with spe- 
cific functions. This process of elaboration is carried on, 
not only during the life of the individual, but throughout 
the whole life of the Generic Organism, which is infinitely 
longer than that of the individual. The conversion of the 
virginal into structural plasma-elements goes on quite in- 
dependently of the environment of the individual; it is 
the result of the developmental energy set free in the vir- 
ginal plasma by fertilisation, and therefore takes place 
within the Germ-plasm, entirely unaffected by any outside 
influence. Therefore that part of the structural plasma which 
goes to form the generative tissues of the new individual 
is equally affected, so that every additional character that 
appears full-blown in the individual, is represented in minia- 
ture in the Germ-plasm, and every step in the gradual con- 
version of the virginal into structural plasma is transmitted 
to the succeeding generations. There occurs, therefore, a 
continued growth of new characters throughout the whole 
life of the Generic Organism in the individuals that spring 
from the affected stock; and thus a new Genus is brought 
into being — as the result of the developmental energy of 
a living organism. By the time that the energy of the 
Generic Organism is extinct, the conversion of virginal into 
structural plasma-elements is completed, and the Generic 
type of individual has become fixed and hereditary. 

The new organisation, which is brought into being by 
the Generic Organism, necessarily subtracts nourishment 
for its sustenance and growth from the older inherited 
organisation of the individual, and there is, therefore, from 
the very first a bitter struggle between the two for existence. 


430 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

The Generic Organism necessarily triumphs, because of its 
enormous developmental energy, because every success it 
obtains is transmitted with accumulative force through suc- 
cessive generations for some thousands of years, and be- 
cause it acts through large masses of individuals, making of 
little importance any excessive resistance found in the few. 
Meanwhile, until the product of the Generic growth has 
sufficiently matured to undertake efficiently the functions 
of a new organisation, the individuals concerned are ac- 
tually less able to maintain their existence against the en- 
vironment, than they were in their original condition be- 
fore the birth of the Generic Organism; for their old in- 
herited organisation has been more or less interfered with 
and atrophied, and the new organisation is not ready to 
discharge the same functions. So long as the energy of the 
Generic Growth is in the ascendant, however, this individ- 
ual incapacity is more than compensated for by the develop- 
mental vigour with which it endows the individual, and 
the collective form it gives to the whole evolutionary move- 
ment; but as soon as the energy of the Generic growth be- 
gins to wane, then the very existence of the new Genus be- 
comes threatened by the disturbance which its growth has 
entailed both in the individual and the external environ- 
ment. Whether the new Genus is to establish itself or not 
will then depend on whether the new organisation is suffi- 
ciently mature to undertake efficiently the functions of the 
older organisation which it has disorganised, and to main- 
tain itself as the directive agency of the individual without 
the supplemental vigour which it has hitherto inherited di- 
rectly from the Generic Organism. Hitherto it has existed 
by virtue of a developmental power separate from that of 
the individual ; now it has to exist, if it is to exist at all, as 
part of the individual. Its ultimate success will depend 


BIOLOGICAL RELATIONS 


43i 


on whether the resistance of the older organisation has been 
sufficiently overcome to enable it to devote its energies to 
the development of new characters, which will make the in- 
dividual a more efficient factor in the struggle for existence ; 
and whether these new characters are such as to overcome 
the difficulties which the environment presents to the ex- 
istence of the reconstructed individual. If the supremacy 
of the Generic Growth cannot be maintained, and if the 
necessary characters cannot be formed, then the ultimate 
result of the whole process is degeneration and not develop- 
ment; and the whole mass of individuals affected finally 
sinks to a lower level of organisation, both physical and so- 
cial, than that from which the movement started. 

Generic development, then, consists of two stages; one 
which, like the corresponding stage in the development of 
the individual, is entirely the result of an innate power of 
growth, and another — also like that in the individual — in 
which the developed structures shape themselves to ends 
determined by the nature of the environment in the midst 
of which existence has to be maintained. When Generic 
development is completely at an end, it leaves behind it 
masses of individuals of a fixed and hereditary Generic 
type, bound together by social bonds and customs which 
are the final and ultimate issue of the unity of the Generic 
Organism. So long as no change takes place in the environ- 
ment, none will take place in either the physical or social 
organisation thus established; for the one has been adapted 
to the other, and between the internal and external condi- 
tions of individual development there has been established 
so perfect an equilibrium as to ensure the maintenance of 
the status quo throughout all ages. The social and physical 
organisations of the masses of individuals concerned are 
suited to the environment, and the environment is fa- 


432 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

vourable to their maintenance. But if the environment 
alters in character, and becomes increasingly hostile to the 
organisation, then changes occur in the latter, which are 
the result solely of influences emanating from the environ- 
ment. These changes consist wholly, however, in the pres- 
ervation and reinforcement of such characters, in both forms 
of organisation, as are useful for the preservation of the 
existence of the individuals concerned; and in the gradual 
loss and obliteration of those characters which hinder their 
survival. The reader must grasp the fact that that which 
is preserved in this phase of the evolutionary process, is a 
different thing entirely from that which is preserved in the 
phase of Generic development. In the latter phase it is 
the Generic which is preserved at the expense of the indi- 
vidual; in the former it is the individual that is preserved 
at the expense of the Generic. If the capacities of the in- 
dividual are such as to cause the social form of existence to 
give him advantages in the struggle for existence which he 
would not otherwise possess, then that form of existence 
inherited from the Generic period of development is per- 
petuated. But if the hindrances to the social form of ex- 
istence are great, and the capacities of the individual are 
such as to make him capable of fending for himself, then the 
social form of existence gradually vanishes; and the indi- 
vidual becomes a solitarily living creature. 

Thus it is the environment which determines which of 
the characters inherited from the Generic period of develop- 
ment are to be perpetuated. And in this way it is the en- 
vironment which ultimately determines the actual line of 
development, running through many Genera, in each great 
evolutionary epoch. For the Generic Growth simply adds 
itself to the inherited structure of the individual in the 
form of formative protoplasm; and by this means each 


BIOLOGICAL RELATIONS 


433 


organ of the individual which has a sufficiently vigorous 
vitality to survive in the struggle for existence between the 
Generic Growth and the inherited organisation, becomes 
finally endowed with greater powers than it possessed be- 
fore for the performance of its functions. It is therefore just 
those organs which have been serviceable in the struggle for 
existence of the individual before the birth of the Generic 
Organism, and which have been perpetuated and rendered 
more vigorous by the nature of the environment, that the 
Generic Growth finally lifts to a higher level of organisa- 
tion. It does not do the same for those organs which have 
not been useful to the individual. The latter have al- 
ready become, in consequence of this inutility, atrophied 
and less vigorous in the inherited structure of the individ- 
ual; they therefore suffer far more in the course of the 
struggle for existence between the Generic Growth and the 
inherited organisation; and their final reconstruction is 
checked by the same causes which led to their atrophy in 
the pre-Generic period, if the environment still proves hos- 
tile to their active employment. Thus each Generic 
Growth tends to render more perfect those organs in the 
inherited structure of the individual which are adapted to 
cope with the necessities of the environment, and to ob- 
literate those which have not this quality. It is the en- 
vironment, therefore, which determines the actual line of 
development in those great evolutionary epochs, which have 
each resulted in the production of a particular class of living 
things. 

It is easy to see that the perspective in which we can 
alone study the existing condition of things in the animal 
and vegetable kingdoms could not possibly reveal to us the 
operation of a Generic process; for it gives us no sequences 
of sufficient extent in the development of any one Genus to 


434 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

enable us to determine its presence. The knowledge we 
possess of the animal world in its natural state only gives 
us glimpses of the completed results of the evolutionary 
process. The most striking feature of these completed re- 
sults is the adaptation of structural development to enable 
the individual to maintain his existence; an adaptation 
which we can see carried on, in many cases, from type to 
type throughout a whole class of living things. This adap- 
tation is the result of Natural Selection, and therefore the 
perspective in which we study the animal world in its nat- 
ural state necessarily gives us everywhere evidences of the 
process of Natural Selection, but it could not possibly af- 
ford us anywhere sure evidence that there was such a thing 
in operation as a Generic process; for even if there were 
any class of animals in which such a process was at the pres- 
ent day operative, it would not reveal itself to us. The 
most that it could afford us would be vague indications of 
its operation, which might be sufficient to engender doubts 
as to whether Natural Selection had been, in truth, the sole 
determinant agent in the great process. That these doubts 
have increasingly troubled the minds of biologists is evident 
from the literature of the subject. But in the absence of 
the only scientific test, that appeal to facts which Nature 
does not afford us in the case of the Generic process, it is 
obvious that all conceptions of the supplementary agent 
must be highly conjectural, and it is more than probable 
that they would fall far short of the truth. As a matter of 
fact, all conceptions of the supplementary agent hitherto 
advanced are incapable of accounting for that collective 
nature of the evolutionary movement which is so striking 
a feature of the historical progression of humanity. For 
what we know of the history of Mankind makes it clear 
that the dominant note in human evolution has always 


BIOLOGICAL RELATIONS 


435 

been the preservation of the universal at the expense of the 
individual; that humanity has developed in large masses 
moving simultaneously wherein the comfort, welfare, and 
even existence of the individual have been subordinated to 
the requirements of a common directing force. That this 
force is present in the mental constitution of every indi- 
vidual, and that it enforces his allegiance and determines 
or modifies every phase of his consciousness is equally evi- 
dent to the student of human nature. In one word, in hu- 
manity the action of a universal agent which is capable of 
influencing large masses of individuals simultaneously and 
of influencing them in an exactly opposite manner to the 
way in which Natural Selection affects them, is clearly in- 
dicated as an integral factor in the evolutionary process. 
It is the absence of this attribute of universality in any of 
the supplementary ideas hitherto conjectured by biologists 
to fill up the gaps that Natural Selection leaves in the 
logical explanation of Cosmical evolution, that definitely 
brands them as devoid of truth. For since it is the funda- 
mental axiom of the whole doctrine of evolution that what- 
ever the “modus operandi” of the great process may be, it 
must be the same throughout the whole world of living 
things; therefore if there is in the process an agent sup- 
plementary to Natural Selection — and the history of 
humanity assures us that there is — then that supple- 
mentary agent must be of a nature to explain the collec- 
tive development of humanity, as well as to account 
for the vagaries of the tendency of variation in 
Nature, which alone makes it possible for Natural Selec- 
tion to act. 

In the light of these considerations, it is easy to see that 
the perspective in which the biologist views Nature — 
though it embraces the converging masses of evidence from 


436 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

many sources, and the long vistas of all living categories 
in their developmental relations, which are necessary to en- 
able him to certify the fact of evolution — causes him to 
be entirely nonplussed when he turns his attention to that 
world of humanity which has been brought into being by 
the historical evolution of mankind. For here we are ac- 
tually in the midst of a Generic process, completely illumi- 
nated by historical records, which has been operating for 
many thousands of years ; and the Racial movements 
through which this process has propagated itself are so wide- 
spreading and vigorous, and have succeeded each other so 
rapidly, that Natural Selection has neither room nor op- 
portunity to act. If Natural Selection does operate 
at all amongst the civilised Races, it does so only in a very 
subsidiary manner; it has not affected in the slightest de- 
gree any of the great historical movements of humanity; 
it has not caused the rise or fall of Empires; it has not 
built up human character, and it has not even determined 
the nature of those who have survived the perils of develop- 
ment in the world-drama of human evolution. All this 
is fully admitted by Darwin himself in his “Descent of 
Man.” Thus it follows that the greater the historical con- 
sciousness of the biologist, and the more capable he is of 
grasping the realities of human existence, the more apt he 
is to run the risk of violating the fundamental canons of 
scientific philosophy, if he attempts to trace in this world 
the pattern of the evolutionary movement. The risk that 
he runs is of being driven to the conclusion that the evolu- 
tionary process in humanity is something quite new, and 
quite different from that which has been operating through- 
out an eternity of time in the animal and vegetable king- 
doms, and that the whole order of Nature has been sub- 
verted by the appearance, for the first time in the history 


BIOLOGICAL RELATIONS 


437 


of evolution, of a new determinant agent. It is such a con- 
clusion that is adumbrated in the Romanes Lecture of 1893, 
when Huxley admitted that, so far as he could see, there 
was no getting away from the fact that the cosmic process 
had been arrested and suppressed, in the limited sphere of 
human development, by the ethical promptings of the hu- 
man mind. This conclusion is so stupendously incongruous 
with the whole spirit of scientific philosophy, and with the 
whole spirit of Huxley’s own work, that at first sight it 
may appear to precipitate the whole doctrine of evolution 
into a bottomless chasm of chaos and confusion; and there 
is no doubt that this momentary failure of the scientific 
method of thought in face of the human problem is the 
cause of that strange and unexpected revulsion of feeling 
which has infected so many minds at the present day, and 
has produced so rank a growth of fraudulent mysticisms, 
as to make one wonder sometimes whether we are not drift- 
ing back into the mental chaos and confusion of the Dark 
Ages. But our point of view obviously relieves the situa- 
tion. It shows that the stumbling block is not really in 
the nature of things, but is simply the result of the biologi- 
cal perspective, which causes Natural Selection to appear 
as the one and only determinant of the evolutionary proc- 
ess. It shows that the Generic process, as it manifests it- 
self in humanity, is no new thing in the history of evolu- 
tion; but that it has been operating in conjunction with 
Natural Selection throughout the whole eternity of cosmic 
development, although this operation is not sufficiently 
marked in the biologist’s vision of things to cause him 
to appreciate the fact. Hence there is here no question of 
a clashing betwixt logic and the scientific method of 
thought; only a little confusion on the part of the scientific 
thinker, resulting from the necessity of explaining the origin 


438 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

of existent realities in terms of a process which alone could 
not have produced them. 

The more we study the bearings of our postulate, the 
clearer does it become that it is capable of filling all the 
gaps that Natural Selection leaves in the logical explana- 
tion of cosmical evolution. It renders entirely unnecessary 
the theory of the hereditary transmission of acquired char- 
acters, which has already been condemned by the majority 
of living biologists. It supplies an adequate cause for all 
the vagaries of the tendency to variation, without which 
all biologists are agreed that Natural Selection could not 
operate. It effectively answers the question which has 
been often used with deadly effect against the doctrine of 
evolution; the question as to how any developing mass of 
individuals succeeded in existing at all during the period of 
adjustment and adaptation, before the new characters ne- 
cessitated by the excessive hostility of the environment to 
the pre-existing condition had time to mature and to be- 
come efficient factors in the struggle for existence. For it 
appears, in the light of our postulate, that every developing 
mass of individuals possesses an energy of existence and of 
reproduction far in excess of individuals that are not de- 
veloping ; but more important still, it shows that what starts 
development is not the destructiveness of the environment, 
but simply an innate power of growth, dependent on a 
specific stimulation of the Germ-plasm; so that the initial 
stages of development do normally occur in the midst of an 
environment which is not excessively hostile or destructive. 
Furthermore, it adequately accounts for the existence of 
characters which may not be of any particular value to the 
individual in the struggle for existence; for the permanent 
separateness of all Genera and Species; and also for their 
enormous number and variety. All these points have been 


BIOLOGICAL RELATIONS 


439 


points difficult to explain on the theory that Natural Selec- 
tion was the sole determinant of evolution. In the absence 
of an organic creative element — that is, one that is operative 
only for limited and recurrent periods — such as is indicated 
in our postulate; it is difficult to see how Natural Selection 
alone would have produced that development in separate 
compartments which we are forced to recognise by the rigid 
classification of Genera and Species. Nor is it easy to see 
how, in the absence of an independent creative element con- 
stantly furnishing the basis of fresh points of departure for 
Natural Selection to work upon, an environment which has, 
after all, changed very little and that very slowly, could 
have been responsible for the production of such an infinite 
number and variety of Genera and Species. 

However this may be, if we go a little further and, leav- 
ing behind us all questions of morphology, address our- 
selves to the consideration of the social side of animal life, 
it is certain that we have in our postulate the only theory 
that accounts satisfactorily for the origin of the conditions 
that obtain. Social forms of existence are very commonly 
met with in the animal world; the Ants and Bees furnish 
us with very familiar examples of completely formed social 
organisation, and of masses of individuals trained to per- 
fection in the social mode of existence. Now it must be 
clearly understood that only those qualities which give to 
the individual, as an individual pure and simple, advan- 
tages in the struggle for existence, are preserved, reinforced, 
and developed to perfection by Natural Selection. In other 
words, the only possible tendency of Natural Selection is 
to make the individual more and more selfish and indi- 
vidualistic, more and more capable of maintaining his ex- 
istence in the solitary state, and more and more incapable 
of entering into a social combination. How is it possible 


440 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

to explain, if Natural Selection be the sole determinant of 
the evolutionary process, the widespread occurrence of the 
social form of existence in the Animal Kingdom^ It is no 
answer to say that an incapacity for maintaining the soli- 
tary state of existence in the face of a hostile environment 
would necessitate a social combination in order to enable the 
individuals affected to survive; for if Natural Selection had 
been efficiently performed, there could be no such incapacity, 
at any rate in species appearing late in the evolutionary 
process, because the postulated action of Natural Selection 
is actually to prevent the existence, the perpetuation, and 
the further development of individuals afflicted with such 
incapacity. To say that, late in the history of the evolu- 
tionary process, highly organised species have come into ex- 
istence incapable of maintaining themselves individually in 
the struggle for existence, is simply to admit that Natural 
Selection has not been the sole determining agent of the 
evolutionary process. 

Even amongst creatures living solitarily, we meet with 
perpetuated modes of behaviour which, though obviously of 
advantage to the individual, can have had no other but a 
social origin. Take, for example, the prolonged marriage 
unions which are characteristic of many species, especially 
in the class of birds. As Dr. Westermarck has pointed out, 
these marriage unions exist wherever the offspring are in- 
capable in their earlier days of fending for themselves, al- 
though the parents themselves are constitutionally incapable 
of mating except for a definite and limited season of the 
year; and he argues that these customs must have origi- 
nated through Natural Selection, in that they were ob- 
viously of advantage to the perpetuation of the species, and 
could not have arisen from the natural tendencies of the 
parents themselves. This sort of argument is like putting 


BIOLOGICAL RELATIONS 


441 

the cart before the horse. We are asked to believe that 
originally the parents continued together only so long as 
the pairing season lasted, that they produced offspring in- 
capable at first of fending for themselves ; and that finally, 
in order to protect this incapable offspring, the species be- 
came so affected through Natural Selection as to render the 
prolonged marriage union a habitual mode of behaviour. 
The idea is absurd ; how did the incapable offspring manage 
to exist and grow up to maturity before the custom became 
habitual 4 ? Obviously under these conditions, and through 
the operation of Natural Selection, the species would have 
ceased to exist long before it had time to habituate itself to 
a mode of behaviour so repugnant to the physical constitu- 
tion of the individual. In fact, Natural Selection would 
have prevented any such species from ever coming into ex- 
istence at all. That they have come into existence, and 
have been perpetuated, makes it certain that the prolonged 
marriage union was “ab initio,” a customary mode of be- 
haviour in those species. The question is, how could such 
a mode of behaviour have originated and become customary, 
since it could not have sprung from the natural tendencies 
of the parents themselves, as their physical constitution only 
renders them capable of mating for a definite and limited 
season in the year^ 

From our point of view, these various problems present no 
difficulty. Because of the unity of the developmental organ- 
ism, the Genus or Species is social “ab initio” ; social neces- 
sity makes the marriage union a permanent relationship, as 
in the case of human society; and this permanent relation- 
ship is made a natural one by the change brought about 
in the physical constitution of the individual through the 
influence of the Generic Growth. The latter suppresses 
the physiological rhythm which renders the individual erotic 


442 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

only for a limited and definite season, and substitutes instead 
a procreative impulse which springs from itself, and there- 
fore renders the individual subject throughout his existence 
to those feelings which incline him to exercise the sexual 
functions. In the period of Generic development, there- 
fore, the marriage union is necessarily and naturally a per- 
manent relationship; and like all other products of Generic 
development, the tendency towards this mode of behaviour 
becomes a fixed and hereditary habit in the individual. But 
if, after the extinction of the Generic Organism, the in- 
herited social organisation is adversely affected by the en- 
vironment so that it finally disappears, then this original 
habit will also disappear, and the marriage union become a 
temporary relationship, determined and limited by an erotic 
capacity subject to the physiological rhythm of the indi- 
vidual organism. But when there are circumstances that 
make the perpetuation of the original habit necessary to the 
individual in the struggle for existence, then either the origi- 
nal habit must be retained, or the species becomes extinct. 
Thus it is easy to see why, in those species where the off- 
spring are not able to fend for themselves from the very 
first, the original social habit should still prevail, even 
though the individual should have become in all other re- 
spects a solitarily living creature, and physiologically ca- 
pable of mating only for a definite and limited season of the 
year. 

Finally, with regard to the artificial selection of the do- 
mesticated varieties of animals and plants, it is easy to see, 
in the light of our postulate, how — once the capacity for 
development is started in any stock — the breeder controls 
and shapes this developmental capacity to his own ends. 
He does so by taking advantage of the fact that it is just 
those organs and qualities which are preserved in the in- 


BIOLOGICAL RELATIONS 


443 


herited constitution of the individual, that are rendered more 
prominent and raised to higher levels of organisation, by 
the Generic Growth. He allows only those individuals to 
breed and multiply that possess in the highest degree the 
qualities and characters which he desires to perpetuate and 
to develop; whilst he carefully destroys those that are de- 
ficient in them. He thus compels the Generic Growth to 
develop itself on the lines of an inherited constitution se- 
lected by himself, and thereby secures the required modifi 
cation of the original specific type. He does, therefore, 
what the environment does in determining the ultimate line 
of development; but he does it with a far greater force and 
concentration of purpose, and thereby interferes with the 
natural form of the process. 

But further, there are certain features of this particulai 
process which are extremely difficult to explain without 
our postulate. In the first place, no new species are ever 
produced artificially simply by modification of the environ- 
ment and the judicious weeding out of unfit individuals 
in the same variety. Nothing approaching in character 
to a new species is ever obtained apart from cross-fertilisa- 
tion. But it is not any kind of cross-breeding that is effec- 
tual in producing a new species ; a breeder may have to ex- 
periment a hundred times and more before he succeeds in 
producing anything which bears the slightest resemblance 
to a new species. Obviously, therefore, the cause of the 
new developmentary capacity lies in an affection of the 
Germ-plasma; and this affection is a specific condition, which 
does not make its appearance as a necessary result of the 
ordinary crossing of individuals. 

Now what happens when, after such a specific act of fer- 
tilisation, a new stock appears capable of being developed 
into a new species*? All breeders are aware of the fact 


444 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANCIENT RELIGIONS 

that, by care and appropriate treatment, it is possible for 
a time to obtain good results from this stock in the way of 
variation until a new species is produced. But they are also 
aware that, after a certain time, no further efforts are of 
any avail in producing further development. Varieties of 
the species, differing in superficial qualities of little sta- 
bility, may be produced by judicious crossing, but the species 
itself never advances any further. It is quite immaterial 
whether you have to do with a carrot, a chrysanthemum, a 
cat, or a dog — the same remarkable arrest of developmental 
capacity always makes its appearance. 

Now what do these phenomena, which have puzzled 
breeders ever since breeding became a systematic pursuit, 
suggest 4 ? Do they not suggest that, whenever we breed a 
new stock that is capable of being developed into a new 
species, this capacity is dependent on the vital growth of a 
new organic element in the Germ-plasma of the stocks 
What is the exuberant tendency to variation of a definite 
and stable type, but the expression of its growth ; and what 
is the disappearance of this tendency, but the expression of 
its decay and final extinction? 

Enough has been said in this chapter to show that the 
postulate verified in this work in the historical evolution of 
humanity does embody in one coherent and intelligible 
scheme the totality of developmental phenomena in all the 
categories of the living world; and it thus fulfils the final 
test of any scientific theory of evolution. 


THE END 


INDEX 


* 






INDEX 


A 

Abelard, “Sic et Non.,” 395. 
Abraham, 304, 305. 

Action, 87. 

Conscious, exhaustive, 108. 
Mechanical, 105, 108. 

Africa, Native Women, 134. 
Ahriman, 258 seq., 294. 

Ahura, 255, 257, 258, 277, 278. 
Ahura-Mazda, 258 seq., 277, 294, 
3io, 377, 395- 
Alcohol, 368, 369. 

Alexander the Great, 262. 

His mother, 252. 

Altruism, 29. 

America, civilisation, 19. 

Amon-Ra, 56. 

Amos, quoted, 329. 

Anatomy, study of, 405. 
Ancestor-Worship, 177 seq., 229, 
244. 

Ancestors, first of great gods, 182. 
Animal kingdom, position of sexes, 
141. 

Animal life, social side, 439. 
Animism, 208, 216, 217, 220, 222. 

Malignant, 145 seq., 159, 160, 175. 
Anselm, 395. 

Anthropologist, 75. 

Ants, 439. 

Anu, 2^3. 

Aquinas, Thomas, 396. 

Arabians, 10. 

Philosophers, 384. 

Racial movement, 384. 

Archaic races: — 

Expansion, 119. 

Polygamous impulse, 121, 122. 
Aristotle, 366, 367, 396. 

Artistic expression, power of, 406. 
Aryans, 101, 102, 103. 

Asceticism, 380, 383, 388, 398. 
Asiatic nations, mental idiosyn- 
crasy, 73. 


Assyria, 71. 

Deities, 56, 207. 

Later religious system, great 
gods, 232, 242. 

Power, rise of, 303. 

Astrologists, 247. 

Astronomy, 248. 

Asura, 277. 

Attis, 363, 369. 

Austria, disintegration of, 17. 
Austro-German States, expansion 
of, 15. 

B 

Babylonia, 102, 317. 

Astrologists, 247. 

Deities, 56, 207, 21 1, 232, 242, 247. 
Myths, 233 seq., 246. 

Creation, 321 seq. 

Palaces and temples, 34. 

Passion worship, development, 

251. 

Records, 102, 103. 

Religious development, 103, 246 
seq., 368, 383. 

Triads, 293, 294. 

Babylonians, mental behaviour, 71. 
Bacchus, cult of, 369, 392. 

Bachoven, on matriarchal period, 
135, 136. 

Bacon, on scientific philosophy, 404. 
Barbarism of Oriental nations, 
33, 35, 38, 39- 
Bees, 439. 

Bel, 232, 250, 293. 

Belgium, 19. 

Bhagardgita, quoted, 286. 

Biological relations, 428 seq. 
Biologist, 74. 

Birds, marriage unions, 440. 
Brahman, 276, 277, 278 seq., 287 seq., 
294, 295, 325, 377, 395- 
Described, 281, 282 seq. 


447 


INDEX 


448 


Brahminism, 176, 265, 295, 383, 388. 
As a religion, 51. 

Attitude towards material uni- 
verse, 325, 326. 

Basis of social relations, 54. 
Gods, 207, 276, 280, 287, 354. 
Triad of gods, 305, 306. 

Ideal, 285. 

Law, 286. 

Magic, 290. 

Philosophy, 292. 

Sacred books, 50. 

Sacrifice, 289, 290, 320. 
Subjectivity, 54, 64. 

Zenith, 276. 

Brahmins, 71. 

Exempt from taxation, 52. 

Occult power, 290 seq. 

Position in Hindoo society, 54. 
Relations with Sudras, 53. 
Religious duty, 267. 

Women, 52, 53, 132, 143. 
Breeding animals and plants, 442 
seq. 

Buddhism, 293, 378. 

Burial, 185, 193. 

Business, manner of carrying out, 
77 , 78 . 

C 

Calvinists, 18. 

Canaanites, 308, 309, 313, 317, 318. 
Cannibalism, 177, 188. 

Carthaginians, 361. 

Caste system, 43, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 
306, 389. 

Causation, theory of, 23. 

Cerebral Cortex, layers of cells, 94 
seq. See also Mind-organ. 
Chaldeans, 71. 

Hymns, 165. 

Priest-chiefs, 229. 

Tablets on demons, 149. 

Chivalry, cult of, 392. 

Christ, the Son of God, 340, 344. 
Jewish Messiah, 346, 347. 

Mission, 374. 

Christian Science, 423, 424, 425, 426. 


Christianity, 373. 

Antithesis of Oriental Paganism, 
58 . 

Drift into Paganism, 340. 

Effects, 39, 40, 41. See also Re- 
ligion. 

Essential significance, 40. 

Mithraism and, 373 seq. 

Christians, early, 340. 

Civilisation : 

Archaic period, 34, 38, 40, 42, 49, 
50, si, 54, 56, 58, 60, 61, 63, 69, 
70. 

Early religions and, 212 seq., 225. 

How regarded in history, 3 seq. 

Implications of, 332. 

Mediaeval Catholic, 7, 14 seq., 18, 
40, 360, 382, 384, 386 seq. 

Modern Protestant, 7, 33, 35, 37 
seq., 69, 336, 402 seq. 

Features, 406. 

Moral and social aspects, 225 
seq., 246. 

Origin of, 28. 

See also under Egypt, Greek, 
Jews, Mohammedan, Roman. 

Cloistered communities, 389, 391. 

Cognition, 67. 

Consciousness : — 

General religions. See Religious 
consciousness. 

Normal condition, 41 1. 

Objective phase, 67, 77, 78, 93. 
See also Mentation. 

Pagan religions, 98, 101. 

Subjective phase, 79, 80, 84, 87 
seq., 93, 98, 183. 

Two phases, 92. 

Vividness of, 105. 

Constantine, Emperor, 378. 

Copernicus, 405. 

Cordova, marble baths, 16. 

Council of Sens, 395. 

Creation, account of, 31 1, 312. 

Myths, 233, 234, 320, 321 seq., 326 
seq. 

Crusades, 16. 

Cuneiform and hieroglyphic texts, 
34 . 

Cybele, cult of, 251, 254, 363, 369, 
37 °, 372 , 373 - 


INDEX 


449 


D 

Deva, 255, 258, 260, 261, 266, 277, 
280, 372. 

Dahomey, women, 134. 

Dark Ages, 14, 15. 

Darwin: “Descent of Man,” 436. 

Theory of evolution, 428. 

David, King, 81, 314. 

Death, 180 seq., 195 seq. 

Idea of, 146, 152. 

Death demon, 179, 180, 195, 203. 

Exorcism of, 157, 193. 

Deity, trinitarian conception of, 293, 

294, 295. 

Demon-worship, 144 seq., 175, 213, 

251. 

Tree demon, 153. 
Demon-worshipper, 226, 228. 
Demons, 164, 167, 171, 172, 173, 192, 
209. 

Number of, 201, 206, 212, 213, 214, 
227, 250. 

Demeter, 365. 

Democracy, modern, 37. 

Destructive tendencies, 119, 120, 

125. 

Development : — 

Mental, 66, 67. 

Theory of, 37. 

“Devil-dance,” 156, 157, 158, I75> 
177- 

Dialectic, 394, 396, 397- 
Dreams, 87 seq., 105, 191. 

Time consciousness, 91. 

E 

Ea, 250, 293. 

Ecclesiastical system, indignation 
against, 404. 

Edomites, 303. 

Egotism, 29, 37, 56. 

Egypt: 317. 

Architecture — size of stones used, 
207, 208. 

Assurance of immortality, 46, 48. 
Buildings and art, 61. 

Civilisation, 63, 231. 

Deified King, 210. 


Egypt — Continued. 

Early, contrasted with modern 
Englishman, 66. 

Early Dynastic period, 43. 

Early Sumerian civilisation, 42, 
55- 

Feudalism, 49, 50, 51* 

Nomes, 55. 

Justice of social relations, 45, 50. 

King one of gods, 46. 

Later Empire, 303. 

Marriage, 57. 

Military period, 56. 

Monuments, religious, 45, 217 seq. 

“Negative Confession,” 47, 48, 57, 
211. 

Peaceful atmosphere, 55. 

Periods of constructive energy, 
34- 

Position of women, 130. 

Pre-dynastic, 219, 220, 221, 223. 

Public schools, 43. 

Records, 102, 103. 

Religious movement, 103, 203, 

216 seq., 293. 

Retrogression, 61, 63. 

Sculptures, 44, 47. 

Sense of eternity, 218, 219. See 
also Eternity. 

Source of fertility, 197. 

Tombs, 34, 217. See also Pyra- 
mids. 

Ornamentation, 17. 

Treatment of lower classes, 44, 45, 
46, 48. 

Works of Fourth Dynasty, 212, 
216, 217, 221, 223, 224. 

Egyptians (old), mental behaviour, 
71- 

El Shaddai, or Elohim, 304, 339. 
See also Jehovah. 

Embryology, 21. 

England : — 

Civilised growth of, 5, 17, 19, 40. 

State contrasted with that of early 
Egyptians, 66. 

Environment, 432, 433, 438, 443. 

Equality, 230. 

Eternity, consciousness of, 182 seq., 
194, 196, 201, 207, 218, 219, 250, 
285. 


INDEX 


450 

Evolution in humanity, 3, 6 seq., 20, 
428 seq. 

Defined, 27. 

New era, 353. 

Religious and historical develop- 
ment, 104, 126, et passim. 
Theory of, 62, 63, 428 seq. 

Two phases, 65. 

See also Racial Movements. 
Expansion of nations, 116 seq. 
Defined, 6. 

F 

Faith, 79. 

Faith -healing, 423, 424, 426. 

Fetich, 151, 154, 156, 157, 160, 167, 
172, 173, 174, 178, 188. 

Gods, 175, 176. 

Feudal system, 49, 50, 51, 389, 390. 
Final considerations, 410 seq. 

Fire, sacred character, 193. 

Flood, myth, 246, 247. 

France, Revolution, 19. 

Frederick II, Emperor, 391. 

Future life, 328. 

G 

Galileo, discoveries, 404. 

Garden of Eden, 312. 

Genera, 438, 439, 441. 

Generic organism, 169, 238 seq., 429, 
430. 

Brahma, 295. 

Cosmic process, 339, 347, 355, 361, 
362, 366, 437. 

Development, 140, 141, 331 seq., 
347- 

Eternal life of, 181. 

Growth, 256, 257, 295, 443; Dia- 
gram, 356 seq. See also under 
Mind-organ. 

Life of, 205, 429 seq. 

Unity, 206, 431. 

Generic wave, 3 seq. Physical 
basis, 94 seq. 

Material deposit, 66 seq. 

Rise of, 1 15 seq. 

Single organism, 99, 100, 101, 103. 
Two phases, 34 seq., 431 seq. 

See also Racial Movements. 


Germ-plasm', 21 seq., 31, 97, 99, 140. 

Different elements, 23. 

Virginal elements, 25, 30, 98, 99, 
162, 428, 429. 

Germany, religious wars, 19. 

God, Creator of universe, 338 seq. 
See also Jehovah. 

Essential characteristics, 341 seq. 

Revelation of, 340, 349: in Jeho- 
vah, 297 seq., 308 seq. 

Trinity, 376. 

Gods, pagan, 93, 202, 207, 208, 246, 
311- 

Dependent on worship and sacri- 
fice, 327. 

Great, 207, 209, 210, 21 1. 

Of Fifth and Sixth stages, 2 66, 
267. 

Worship of, 56, 58 seq., 176, 307, 
310. 

See also Various Names. 

Goliardic poetry, 391. 

Gnostic heresy, 375. 

Gnostic religions, central myth, 3 63. 

Good spirits, 164, 168, 170, 171, 172, 
177- 

Lineage of, 173. 

Number of, 207, 209, 213, 214, 227, 
250. 

Worship of, 175 seq., 228. 

Gough, on etymology of Brahman, 
281. 

Greeks : — 

Absence of religious efferves- 
cence, 359, 360. 

Civilisation, 7, 8, 13, 16, 39, 59, 69, 
79, 336, 344, 346, 353 seq. 

Mysteries, 346, 353, 361, 363 seq. 

Colonies, 117. 

Intellectual preeminence, 69. 

Position of women, 132. 

Power of artistic expression, 354. 

Gunpowder, 405. 

H 

Harem system, 59, 122. 

Hebrew tribes, 303, 308. See also 
Jews and Jewish Civilisation. 

Hedjaz population, 9, 10, ii, 

Hegemony, hi, 


INDEX 


45i 


Heliopolis, priests of Ra, 202. 
Herodotus, 59. 

On Mithra, 263. 

H’exateuch, composite deity, 318, 
319 . 

High priests, 210. 

Hindoos : — 

Caste system, 49, 51, 52. 

Sacred books, 54. 

Social institutions, 54, 289, 389. 
See also Brahman and Brahmin- 
ism, 54. 

History, how taught, 3. 

History of humanity, theory of, 62, 

63. 

Holland, 19. 

Holy Roman Empire, 15. 
Huguenots, 20. 

“Human Consciousness,” 106. 
Humanism, 399. 

Humanity, evolution of. See Evo- 
lution. 

Huss, 402. 

Huxley, Romanes lecture, 1893, 

437* 

Hypnotic suggestion, 421, 423. 
Hypnotism, 419, 423. 

Hysteria, 412, 413, 414, 415. 

I 

Incantations, 290. 

Indian religion, 250. 

Indo-European races, origin, 103. 
Insanity, 412, 4*3, 4i5» 416, 417, 418, 
422. 

Inspiration, 79. 

Intellectual capacity, 358. 

Intellectual expression, 77. 
Intelligence, higher, 74, 80, 81, 82, 84, 
86, 92, 93. 

Intelligence, modern objective, 68, 
69, 70. 

Intuition, 79, 80, 83, 84. 

Personified, 86. 

Iroquois, 134. 

Isaac, 304, 307. 

Ishtar, 232, 242. 

Isis, 198, 363, 369. 

Israelites. See First Jewish Civil- 
isation. 

Italian States, expansion of, 15, 16. 


J 

Jacob, 304, 307. 

Jehovah, 395. 

Contrasted with pagan gods, 326 
seq. 

Creation, 320 seq., 326 seq. 
Meaning of word, 308, 309. 
Original vision of, 39, 318, 320, 
321, 340, 344, 345, 377, 381. 
Revelation of God in, 297 seq., 
308 seq. 

Separateness, 323, 324. 
Jehovah-Elohim, 318, 319, 382. 
Jerusalem, 347. 

Destruction of, 375. 

Jesuits, 403. 

Jews : — 

Characteristics, 69 seq. 
Civilisation, 7, 8, 39, 69 seq., 302 
seq. 

Zenith, 302. 

Gods, 304 seq., 354. 

Knowledge of true God, 330. 
Later religious philosophy, 318, 
319 . 

Law of exclusiveness, 306, 307, 
311, 316, 317, 3i8. 

Literature. See O. T. Literature. 
Migration from Egypt, 317. 
Nation disintegrated, 9. 

Position of women, 132, 143. 
Religious idea among, 104. 
Return from exile, 316. 

Return to civilisation, 312. 
Revelation of Jehovah, 297 seq., 
308 seq. 

Sketch of history, 313 seq. 
Wanderings, 118. 

Julian, emperor, 378. 

Justice, 36, 42, 43, 230. 

Of social relations, 45, 48. 
Principle of, 42. 

K 

Khabiri, desert tribes, 303. 
Kingship, origin of, 210. 

Krishna, 279. 

Kshatriyas, 52. 


452 


INDEX 


L 

Labour, 212. 

Divisions, 149, 150. 

Laws of Nature, 72. 

Lays of Troubadours, 392. 

Libanius, 378. 

Luther, Martin, 402. 

Lutherans, 18, 20. 

M 

Magi, 265. 

Magic, 287 seq. 

Malays, women, 135. 

Man : — 

Divinity of, 178. See also Ances- 
tor Worship. 

Lord of creation, 128, 129. 
Parental duties, 137. 

Patriarchal system, 130, 137. 
Physique, 130. 

Position, 128, 129, 130, 132, 139, 
142 seq. 

Mania, 416, 417, 418. 

Manichseism, 378. 

Marcionite heresy, 375. 

Marduk, god of rising sun, 165, 190, 
194, 233, 322, 323- 
Mariner’s compass, 405. 

Marriage unions, 440 seq. 

Maspero, on demons, 202. 

Material knowledge, 215, 216, 217, 
223. 

Materials, use and handling of, 212, 
213. 

Max Muller, translation of sacred 
books of Brahmins, 50. 

Maya, 283, 284. 

Melancholia, 416. 

Mentation : — 

Archaic form, 71, 73, 74, 75, 80, 81, 
84, 85, 86, 87, 91. 

Modern form, 72, 73, 74, 76 seq., 
86, 90. See also Consciousness. 
Subjective form, 104, no, 180. 
See also Mind-organ. 
Mesopotamia, 303. 

Ruins, 250. 

Middle ages, 14, 15, 18. 
Colonisation, 117. 


Migrations front Central Asia to 
Europe, 244, 245. 

Migrations, origin of tendency, 169, 
170. 

Mind-organ, 66, 67 seq., 74, 78, 88. 
98, 100, 101, 104, 106, 107 seq., 
129, 130, 143, 331, 339- 

Neo-andric, 152, 153, 154, 158, 161, 
162, 163, 165, 178, 179, 182, 186, 

192, 195, 205, 407, 41 1, 415, 416, 

418, 419, 426. 

Diagram' of development, 268 seq., 
356 seq., 364, 367, 382, 386, 387, 
393, 397, 426. 

Neo-andric and Paleogynic, 143, 
147, 148, 166, 167, 171, 173, 183, 

206, 256, 257, 359. 

Paleogynic, 156, 175, 191, 204, 352 . 

Mithra, 263 seq., 278, 294. 

Mithraism, 348, 371 seq. 

Christianity and, 373 seq. 

Mysteries, 363, 373. 

Moabites, 303. 

Modern and ancient behaviour, 71, 
72, 73- 

Modern civilisation. See under Civ- 
ilisation. 

Modern invasion of the world, 116. 

Modern Races : Polygamous in- 
stinct, 121. 

Mohammed, effects of his genius, 9 
seq. 

Mohammedan civilisation, 7, 9 seq., 
16, 336, 360, 382 seq. 

Sketch of, 9 seq. 

Mohammedanism, 378. 

Expansive energy, 117. 

Moon, worship of, 200. 

Morality, 230, 332. 

Lack of, 400, 401, 402. 

Principle of, 36, 42, 55, 57 seq. 

Morphology, 439. 

Moses, 309. 

The burning bush, 82, 83, 85, 104. 

Music, development of art, 407. 

Mythologies of antiquity, 85. 

Myths, 165, 190 seq., 300. 

Later form, 199 seq. 

Of Gnostic religions, 363. 


INDEX 


453 


N 

Nation, definition of, 5, 6. 

Natural Objects: — 

Perception of, 145 seq., 200. 
Worship of, 223, 224. 

Natural selection, 428 seq. 

Nature : — 

Facts and objects of, 76, 79, 80, 81, 
84, 92. 

Forces and materials, 191, 212, 
213, 215. 

Laws of, 90, 291. 

Objects and processes, 209, 214. 
“Negative Confession,” 47, 48, 57, 
211. 

Nehemiah, 321. 

Netherlanders, 20. 

Neurasthenia, 412, 414. 

New Zealand, women, 135. 

Nile, symbol of good spirits, 196, 
197 -' 

Nineveh, Regal library, 144, 165. 
North Italy, towns of, 389, 390. 

O 

Observation, 77. 

Inhibitions of, 81, 82, 83. 
Odalisque, 420. 

Old Testament, behaviour of per- 
sons, 71, 81. 

Literature: Redaction, 302, 317, 
318, 320. 

Separateness of Jehovah, 309 seq. 
Subjective, 299, 300, 301. 

Myths, 199. See also Myths. 
Symbolism', 300, 301. 

Ontogeny, 28. 

Organism, life history of, 13, 20. 
Oriental Paganism, 35, 38, 39, 40. 
Conception of world, 325. 

Cults, 64, 369, 370. 

Development, 293, 294. 
Development of religious ideation. 
See Religious Development. 
Osiris, 46, 47, 165, 190, 194, 195, 219, 
220, 369. 

Negative confession, 57, 21 1. 
Worship of, 202 seq. 


P 

Pacific Islanders, 119. 

Pagan gods. See Gods. 

Pagan religions, development of, 
103. 

Origin of, 70. 

Pagan religious consciousness. 

See Religious Consciousness. 
Paganism, philosophy of, 293. 
Palestine 313, 316, 317, 322. 
Passions, combative and sexual, 235 
seq., 243, 245, 247, 333, 335. 
Peace, principle of, 36, 42, 55 seq. 
Perception, 67. 

Persephone, 366. 

Persians, 60, 61, 71. 

Aryans, 277. 

Gods, 354 
Religion, 250, 292. 

Dualism, 255 seq., 372. 

Magie, 287. 

Personality, alternating, 419, 420. 
Personification of intuitions, 86. 
Perspective of things in Nature, 4. 
Petrarch, humanism, 399. 

Petrie, on religious idea of Egyp- 
tians, 221. 

Philip of Macedon, 252. 

Phoenicia : — 

Deities, 56. 

Later religious system, great 
gods, 232. 

Plato, 366, 367. 

Doctrine of ideas, 357. 

Pluto, 365. 

Portuguese State, expansion of, 15. 
Prayer, 21 1. 

Efficacy of, 176. 

Priests, 164, 166, 228, 279, 402. 
Printing, invention of, 405. 
Protestant race, result of expan- 
sion, 1 16. 

Provenge, towns of, 389, 390, 391. 
Psychical therapeutics, 421, 423. 
Psychology, modern, 72, 73, 75. 

New ideas on, 75 seq. 

Problems of morbid, 41 1 seq. 
Puritans, 18. 


INDEX 


454 

Pyramids, building of, 45, 46, 201. 
Size of stones, 207, 208. 

See also Egypt, Tombs. 

Q 

Quietism’, sacred, 286, 289. See 

also Brahman. 

R 

Ra, Sun-god, 46, 2io. 

Worship of, 202 seq. 

Worshippers, 219. 

Racial decay, 8. 

Racial movements, 3 seq., 20, 35, 98, 
221, 277 et passim. 

Civilising influence, 38, 39, 40, 332 
seq., 362, 401. See also Christi- 
anity and Civilisation. 
Development — moral tendency, 
403, 404. 

Influence of religion, 38, 65. 
Inspiration, 359. 

Instinct, object of, 334. 

Law of, 27 seq., 65, 69. 

Legal status of individuals, 37. 
Material endowment, 65, 66 seq. 

See also Generic Wave. 

Natural selection, 27. 

New races, 102, 103. 

Object of, 32. 

Organism, 26, 30, 31, 32, 98, 99, 
100, 237, 238, 338 et passim. 
Expansive energy, 125. See also 
Generic Organism. 

Periods of decay, 204. 

Physical basis, 21 seq. 

Process, 235 seq. 

Result on humanity, 35, 36, 38. 
Retrogression, 61, 63, 65. 
Rhythm, 7, 8, 20, 34. 

Turning away from Nature, 215. 
See also under Egypt, Greek, 
Jews, etc. 

Rama, 279. 

Reason, 76, 77, 85, 86. 

Authority of, 397, 398. 
Redemption, 344, 345, 377. 
Reformation, 17 seq. 

Reformers, early, 18. 


Religion : — 

Influence of, 38. See also Chris- 
tianity. 

Ritual observance of, 49. 

Two phases of development, 65. 
Religions, early and civilisation, 21 1 
seq. 

Religious Consciousness, 103, 104, 
hi, 291, 295, 332, 400. 
Development of, 102, 103, 126, 214, 
215, 216. 

Cosmic process, 297 seq. 

First stage, 144 seq. 

Second stage, physical basis, 163 
seq. 

Third stage, physical basis, 190 
seq. 

Fourth stage, 232 seq. 

Fifth stage, 255 seq. 

Sixth stage, 276 seq. 

Ideas of savages, 115 seq., 126. 
Pagan, 333, 335. 

Period of Subsidence, 353 seq., 

367. 

Renaissance, 4, 5, 16. 

Early, 16, 17, 18. 

Later, 18, 19. 

Romance, cult of, 392. 

Roman, Romans : — 

Church, 15. 

Civilisations, 7, 8, 13, 16, 39, 2 66, 
336, 344, 346, 353 seq. 

Absence of religious efferves- 
cence, 359, 360. 

Decay, 380. 

Eastern gods, 361. 

Mysteries, 346, 353, 363, 369 seq. 
Expansive energy, 117. 

Great administrators, 355. 
Position of women, 132. 

Rome, 347. 

S 

Sabbath observance, 342, 343. 
Sacrifice, 21 1, 290, 296, 320, 329, 343. 
Efficacy of, 176. 

Theory of, 286, 287. 

St. Bernard of Clairveau, 388, 395, 
396. 


INDEX 


455 


St. Paul, 348, 363, 373. 

Conversion, 349. 

Rejected by Jews, 374. 

Teaching, 375. 

Understood redemption, 345, 346, 
347 - 

Savages : — 

Position of women, 128 seq. 
Present state, 125, 127. 

Religious ideas, 115 seq., 126. 
Results of contact with civilisa- 
tion, 1 15 seq., 122 seq. 

See also Archaic Races. 
Savonarola, 402. 

Scepticism, 397. 

Scholarship, 399. 

Growth of, 405. 

Scribes and Pharisees, 345. 
Seasons, 196. 

Self-existence, realisation of, no. 
Semitic, variation in temperament 
and outlook, 103. 

Serfs, 389. 

Serpent, 159, 160, 174. 

Set, evil spirit, 198, 219. 

Sex, significance of, 123, 128 seq., 
141 seq. 

Siva, 56, 278, 279, 280, 294, 295, 305. 
Social organization, 389. 

Sociologist, modern, 36. 

Sorcerer. Sorcery, 15 1, 155, 156, 
157, 158, 159, 210, 251. See also 
Witchcraft. 

Spain, civilisation in, 4. 

Spanish State, expansion of, 15, 16. 
Species, 438, 439, 441, 443, 444. 
Spirits, animistic, 209, 210. 

Spirits, good. See Good Spirits. 
Spiritual redemption, 337. 

Statecraft, function of, 5. 

Stone for shrines and monuments, 
207, 208. 

Sudras, 52, 53, 286, 389. 

Sun-gods, 210. 

Sun, rising, 193. 

Sun, worship of, zoo. 

Sun, rising of, 200. 

Supernatural, first revelations of, 
144 seq., 150. 


T 

Tahiti, women, 135. 

Tarsus of Cilicia, 348. 
Taurobolium, 370, 372. 
Tel-el-Amarna letters, 303. 

Temple : — 

Of Solomon, 62, 70. 

Rebuilding, 316. 

Sacrifices, 343. 

Tombs, 200. See also Pyramids. 
To ancestors, 182. 

Tertullian, 380. 

Thought, Scientific method of, 405. 
Tiamat, 194, 233, 322. 

Tonga, women, 135. 

Totem worship, 160, 188. 
Transcendentalism, 399, 402. 

Truth, balance of, 48. 

U 

Universal military service, 47. 
Unyoro, queen-mother, 135. 
Upanishads on Brahman, 280, 281. 
See also Brahman. 

V 

Vaisyas, 52. 

Varuna, 277. 

Vedas, 51, 52, 265, 267, 276, 278, 279, 
286, 287, 288. 

Laws on marriage, 60. 

Teaching of, 54. 

Vishnu, 278, 279, 280, 294, 295, 305. 
Institutes of, 287. 

W 

War, 335, 336. 

Weismann, views on Germ-plasm, 
21, 22. 

Westermarck, Dr., on marriage 
unions of bird, 440. 

Winternitz, Professor, 50. 
Witchcraft, 126, 144, 151, 174, 251. 


INDEX 


456 

Women : — 

Development, 414. 

Higher education, 427. 

Influence, 129. 

Matriarchal customs, 128, 130, 

133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 140. 
Position, 128 seq., 142 seq., 252, 
253 . 

Worship : — 

Attitude of, 171, 172, 209. 

Efficacy of, 176. 


Worship — Continued. 

Forms of, 165, 171. 

Of higher gods, 21 1. 
Wyandottes, 134. 

Wycliff, 402. 

Z 

Zend-Avesta, 25s, 257, 262 seq. 
Zoroaster, 258, 262, 278, 289. 
Zoroastrianism, 207. 






















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